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A ROUND ROBIN 



Zhc Soutbevn Migblanbs anb 
MiQblanbets 

IRev. Walter C. mbltafter, D.D. 



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Cburcb /BMsstons publisblng Co. 

211 State Street, Hartford, Conn. 



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T. B. SIMONDS PRINTING CO. 
Hartford, Conn. 



FEB 18 1916 

©aA418877 



CONTENTS. 
Chapter. Page. 

I The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 7 

1. Extent of the Southern Highlands 8 

2. Historical Sketch of the Southern Highlanders . 12 

3. Why They Fell Behind . 18 

4. A Necessary Classification 24 

n Social Conditions and the Point of View 29 

1. Obstacles to Social Intercourse 30 

2. Social Conditions in the Home 34 

3. Social Relationship with Neighbors .... 39 

4. The Point of View 45 

in Religious and Devotional Characteristics 52 

1. Some General Principles 52 

2. The Normal Theology of the Mountains ... 58 

3. Some Abnormal Developments of Religion . . 64 

4. The Earnestness of the Highlander's Religion . . 68 

IV The Work of the Church in the Mountains 74 

1. The Wider Scope of the Work 75 

2. A Brief Survey of the Occupied Field ... 79 

3. Typical Evidences of Fruitful Work ... 88 

V Missionary Methods and Experiences 99 

1. A Kentucky Mission Field 101 

2. What One Missionary Did in Virginia . . . 107 

3. Missionary and Distillers at Grips .... 108 

4. Among the Coal Mines 113 

5. A Life Story 119 

VI What the Church Has Yet to Do 125 

1. Why the Church's Mountain Work Must be 

Developed 126 

2. The Scope and Spirit of This Development . . 133 

3. The Agencies to be Used 137 

4. Some Specific Suggestions 143 



Copyrighted January, 1916 

BY 

CHURCH MISSIONS PUBLISHING CO. 



PREFACE. 

In 1908 the Church Missions Pubhshing Company 
issued a handbook, The Church's Mission to the Moun- 
taineers of the South, compiled by the Rev. Walter 
Hughson of the District of Asheville. In the seven 
years that have passed since the appearance of this 
valuable book, the first comprehensive survey of the 
work of the Church in the Southern mountains, the work 
has developed to such an extent that it has been 
deemed advisable to issue a new book that shall deal 
with it in the light of present conditions. This book 
is presented herewith. 

A casual survey will show that the subject has been 
treated as a unit and on the broadest possible lines. 
This is due to several considerations: The limits of 
the book and the largeness of the subject; the accessi- 
bility of detailed descriptionsof specific fields; and the 
need for such information in this volume as his limited 
space prevents the individual worker from giving 
in the publications bearing on his own work. It is 
hoped that those who read this volume will be led 
to study individual fields. A large number of leaflets 
can be obtained from the Church Missions Publishing 
Co., Hartford, Conn., from the office of the Educational 
Secretary of the Board of Missions, 281 Fourth Avenue 
New York, or from the missionary immediately in 
charge. 

An elaborate bibliography is not attempted, but the 
following books will be found valuable. They may 
be ordered through any book store. 

Our Southern Highlanders, Kephart. 

Highlanders of the South, Thompson. 



"-^^^ 



The Winning of the West, Roosevelt. 

The Southern Mountaineer, Wilson. 

The Crossing, Churchill. 

Blue Grass and Rhododendron, Fox. 

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, Fox. 

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Fox. 

The Prophet of the Great Smokies, Miss Murfree, 
(Chas. Egbert Craddock). 

Mr. Fox's and Miss Murfree's novels are illumin- 
ating on many aspects of mountain life and character. 

To this list may be added the late Mr. Hughson's 
book, The Church's Mission to the Mountaineers of the 
South, of which only a few copies remain, and Miss 
Emma Miles' The Spirit of the Mountains, an exceed- 
ingly charming and sympathetic volume, now out of 
print, but possibly obtainable at old book stores. 



CHAPTER I. 

The preacher had come to a critical point in his 
sermon. "We face a difficult problem here, my 
friends," he said. "Let us not deny, or in any way 
seek to minimize, the perplexity that it causes in our 
minds. Rather let us acknowledge it in all its large- 
ness. Let us look it squarely in the face — and pass on." 

This is as far as most persons go when they travel 
from "Washington to New Orleans. Two distinct 
routes offer themselves. That which takes the traveller 
through Lynchburg, Charlotte, and Atlanta confronts 
him with the Blue Ridge and its foot hills until he 
passes into Alabama. That which carries him through 
Roanoke, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Birmingham 
takes him through the great inter-mountain valley, 
which is the heart of the Appalachian system, and 
which prolongs its features towards the state line of 
Mississippi. 

Or if the traveller is going from Cincinnati or Louis- 
ville to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York; to 
Richmond and Norfolk; to Charleston, Savannah, 
or Jacksonville, he will pass through large sections of 
alternating mountain and valley that please in their 
every prospect. 

But whithersoever bound he passes on, as men have 
been passing on for generations, and in most cases he 
does not so much as know that he has been passing 
through a problem, the most difficult and perplexing, 
the most urgent and encouraging, that faces the 



8 Round Robin 

Christian Church in America — The problem of the devel- 
opment of the Southern Highlander. We too may pass 
on, but the problem does not. It remains, and it is 
growing in importance and urgency every year. 

We shall in this chapter consider certain elements 
of the problem : 

1st, The extent of the Southern Highlands; 

2nd, The origin and history of the Highlanders 
themselves; 

3rd, The conditions of which they have been victims; 
and 

4th, The three classes into which they may be 
divided. 

I. Extent of the Southern Highlands. 

Only recently have writers and students of the 
subject come to an agreement as to the extent of the 
Southern Highlands. Some confined the term strictly 
to the mountain counties. Others perceived that 
the general economic and religious conditions that 
characterized the most broken mountain sections 
prevailed in the foot-hills and even in the contiguous 
lowlands. But no two persons set the same limits. 

Now, however, practically all mountain workers, of 
whatever denomination, have adopted the description 
given after years of study by Mr. John C. Campbell 
of Asheville, N. C, Secretary of the Southern Highland 
Division of the Russell Sage Foundation. According 
to this authority the field of our study embraces all of 
West Virginia; Western Virginia and Eastern Ken- 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 9 

tucky; Western North Carolina and East Tennessee; 
Northwestern South Carolina, North Georgia, and 
Northeastern Alabama. The total included area is 
108,000 square miles, or nearly one-fourth of the total 
area of the eleven Southern states lying east of the 
Mississippi River. 

We may get a clearer conception of the great extent 
of this territory by comparing it with other countries 
or sections: It is more than one-third larger than 
England, Wales and Scotland combined. It is more 
than one-third larger than all New England. It is 
twice as large as either Pennsylvania or New York. 

This region is approximately six hundred miles long 
and two hundred miles wide, and comprises three 
well-defined belts running northeast and southwest: 
(1) The most easterly is called the Appalachian Moun- 
tain Belt, or the Blue Ridge Belt, and comprises the 
Blue Ridge, the Unakas, the Great Smokies, and the 
Balsam mountains. This is the wildest and most 
rugged country of the whole region. (2) Just west of this 
is the Greater Appalachian Valley, varying in width 
from twenty-five to seventy-five miles, the north- 
eastern portion following the Shenandoah River and 
the southwestern the Holston and the Tennessee. (3) 
The westernmost belt is called the Alleghany-Cumber- 
land Plateau. It embraces all of West Virginia, 
Eastern Kentucky, and part of Middle and East 
Tennessee. 

The topography of this region has wide variety. 
The rounded or swelling hills that front the Blue Ridge 
are much like those of the Appalachian Valley, but the 



10 Round Robin 

Cumberland Plateau is entirely unlike the Great 
Smoky Mountains. The Valley is from six hundred 
to fifteen hundred feet above sea-level. On the west 
of the valley rises the Plateau to a height of two 
thousand feet, ending abruptly with a surface more 
level than that of the contiguous valley. On the 
east the mountains rise to a height of from three thous- 
and to nearly seven thousand feet, ridges of three and 
four thousand and peaks of five and six thousand 
being numerous. From the top of Mount Junaluska, 
overtopping Waynesville, N. C, fifteen such peaks 
are visible. In the Plateau Belt railroads are con- 
structed along the top, their descent to the valley 
being readily made by rounding the long spurs which 
project into the plain every mile or less. In the 
Mountain Belt eighty-five per cent of the land has a 
steeper slope than one foot in five, the railroads are 
restricted to the riversides, and when passing from 
one valley to another are forced to grade heavily and 
tunnel deeply through the transverse ranges that 
make much of this region resemble a choppy sea of 
colossal waves arrested suddenly and forever in its 
upheaval. It is important that this varying topog- 
raphy be held in mind, for it has much influence on the 
local population. 

Five millions of white persons, one-twentieth of the 
population of the United States, live in this region. 
This population is twice as great as the total popu- 
lation of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. More than three 
millions of them live on the sides and at the bottom 
of these steep maintain slopes. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 11 

The inhabitants are the most homogeneous people 
in America. Foreign-born and Negroes are ahke 
conspicuously absent. Not twenty thousand foreign 
bom persons are found in the entire region; and this 
statement includes Wheeling, Roanoke, Asheville, 
Knoxville and Chattanooga. Sixty counties have 
fewer than ten foreigners resident, three have none. 
These figures for a region of five millions should be 
compared with the figures for the North Atlantic 
States, where in Lowell, Massachusetts, for example, 
fifty thousand out of a population of one hundred 
thousand are foreign born. Negroes are more num- 
erous, of course, but this is true only of the Valley 
and of the larger towns and cities. Even in the 
cities the Negro population is only about one-fifth of 
the whole population, while in the lowland southern 
cities it is from one-half to three-fifths; but in the 
back counties it is negligible. Two mountain counties 
of Kentucky have twenty negroes in a population of 
twenty-four thousand. The foreign born has not 
come into the Appalachian mountains because he has 
been attracted in other directions. The Negro has 
not come because the mountain people have no need 
for him, no place for him, and much antipathy against 
him. In the Valley, it is true, many of the lower 
strata of both races are on terms of familiarity, calling 
each other "Jim" and "Tom" in the most natural 
way imaginable; but where in the remote fastnesses 
nearness demands and gives neighborliness the Negro 
is entirely without standing. 



12 Round Robin 

II. Historical Sketch of Southern Highlanders. 

The homogeneous people of the Southern Highlands 
are not the descendents of the "poor whites" of colonial 
and slave-holding times. 

Let us get that point fixed in our minds. The 
convicted criminals, the delinquent boys and girls, 
the derelicts, impoverished, and ne'er-do-weels of 
England, who became first the laborers and then the 
flotsam of the English colonies, were the last to enter 
the mountain region; and when they came they came 
in such small numbers that in a broad generalizing 
they deserve absolutely no consideration. 

The first settlers of the Appalachians were the Swiss 
and Palatine Germans, loosely termed to-day "the 
Pennsylvania Dutch," who, about the year 1682, 
began to settle west of the Quakers in the foot hills of 
the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge. They were 
mostly of the Reformed or Lutheran faith, and were 
democratic in sentiment, industrious, thrifty and 
efficient, intelligent as farmers or skilled as artisans. 

But the chief settlers were the Ulstermen of Ireland 
"the Scotch Irish" as we call them, and as they are 
yet the predominant strain of this region from Penn- 
sylvania to Alabama, their history is essential to an 
understanding of the mountain people and of the 
problem which they present. 

The Irish rebellion against Queen Elizabeth had 
been suppressed with relentless energy, and in 1607 
James I. confiscated the estates of the native Irish in 
the six northern counties of Ireland known as Ulster. 
Presbyterian emigrants, some from London, but most 
from the lowlands of Scotland, were settled upon the 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 13 

estates and holdings of the Irish. There they set up a 
Protestantism that has ever since been the most intense 
and uncompromising in the United Kingdom. Though 
we call them Scotch Irish, Irish blood does not flow 
in their veins. They lived in Ireland, but inter- 
marriage with the Irish was forbidden; and Romanist 
and Protestant of Ulster have to this day about the 
same relation and community of interest as had the 
ancient Israelite and Philistine. The Scotch Irish are 
simply undiluted Scotchmen who lived for a time in 
Ireland and then came to America. 

Seemingly favored by the Crown, these Scotch in 
Ireland soon came in conflict with their patron. 
Their leases began to expire in 1633, and dispute 
arose between the autocratic landlord and his in- 
tractable tenant. From County Antrim alone, the 
historian Froude tells us, thirty thousand evicted 
Protestants emigrated to America within two years. 
Fiske, in his "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," 
estimates that within the forty years from 1730 to 
1770, at least half a million souls, or more than half 
the Presbyterian population of the north of Ireland, 
emigrated to the American colonies, of whose popula- 
tion at the outbreak of the Revolution they constituted 
one-sixth. 

Landing chiefly at Boston, Philadelphia, and Charles- 
ton, they scattered themselves along the Atlantic 
seaboard, and pressing westward through both Caro- 
linas and Pennsylvania, formed both the vanguard of 
development and the rear guard of the ocean-facing 
Carolinas. Moving in lines of least resistance the 
Pennsylvania Scotch began settlements further and 



14 Round Robin 

further southwest in the great Valley. Spreading 
themselves up the Shenandoah River and the uplands 
of Virginia and Tennessee and there uniting with their 
relatives from the Carolinas who had come down the 
French Border or skirted the far southern foot hills, 
they pressed on by the Boone Trail into the "Dark and 
Bloody Ground" of Kentucky. It is interesting to 
know that among these pioneer settlers were the ances- 
tors of David Crockett, Sam Houston, John C. Calhoun, 
"Stonewall "Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. 

There were some Irish and some French Huguenot 
settlers also, the first Governor of Tennessee, a leader 
of these frontiersmen, having anglicized his name from 
Xavier to Sevier. The Scotch Irish, however, gave 
the tone and temper to the settlement of this great 
region, a tone and temper based on self-reliance, inde- 
pendence, and individualism; and also on intolerance 
toward anything not consistent with these. 

These qualities, innate in the pioneers, grew to 
excessive proportions under the primitive conditions 
that made every man his own judicial, legislative, 
and executive authority. They were invaluable in 
the long-continued Indian warfare, the brunt of which 
they bore because of their advanced position. In 
stealth, in courage, and in fierceness they were quite 
the match of their savage opponents. They were 
impatient of restraint by their own colonial authority, 
and in one case rose in insurrection against the civil 
authority of North Carolina. 

Being defeated in battle, they crossed the Appala- 
chian Mountains and settled in the Wautauga region 
of what is now East Tennessee, and there in 1772, 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 1 5 

established the first republic in America based upon a 
written constitution, "the first ever adopted by a 
community of American born freemen." 

In 1775 under Daniel Boone some of these colonists 
settled in Kentucky, and before the news of the battle 
of Lexington reached them, they had run up the flag 
of a new colony, Transylvania, defying the menacing 
proclamation of the royal governor of North Carolina. 

At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, in 
1776, Sevier and Shelby with their two hundred and 
ten backwoodsmen repelled and defeated a large force 
of Cherokee Indinas who had attacked the Wautauga 
settlers. 

Three years later, in 1779, these same men, their 
numbers now increased to seven hundred and fifty, 
captured all the British ammunition stored near Look- 
out Mountain in anticipation of the coming compaign, 
and thus saved the colonies that year from a rear 
attack. 

But perhaps their greatest service, greatest because 
rendered in the hour of greatest need, was the defeat 
of Colonel Ferguson and his two hundred regulars 
and two thousand Tories at King's Mountain, in 1780. 
Charleston had been captured by the British; Gates 
had been defeated at Camden; the enemy were over- 
running the interior without organized resistance; 
and Washington himself was saying, "I have almost 
ceased to hope." Ferguson, from the Carolina foot 
hills, sent threats across the mountains to Wautauga 
that he intended to march his army over the mountains, 
hang the patriot leaders, and lay the country waste 
with fire and sword. Not deterred by the unrest and 



16 Round Robin 

increasing boldness of the Indians on their rear, Shelby, 
Campbell and Sevier acted on the principles subse- 
quently adopted by Napoleon, and with nine hundred 
of their followers saved Ferguson the trouble of the 
mountain march by making it themselves. They 
found their foe entrenched on the natural fortress of 
King's Mountain, immediately surrounded him, and 
without waiting to breathe stormed the position from 
all sides simultaneously, capturing over eleven hundred 
English soldiers. Thomas Jefferson declared that in 
its enheartening effect this battle was the turning point 
in the Revolutionary War. When the battle was over 
these border men returned home, only to pass through 
it at once to repel the impending atack of the Indians 
at Boyd's Creek, three hundred miles from King's 
Mountain. 

Of the six leaders in these battles, five were Presby- 
terian elders. 

That the ministry also partook of this militant 
spirit is evidenced by "a philippic against laggards" 
delivered in 1813 by a Presbyterian minister, who 
pronounced the curse of Meroz upon such, and declared : 
"British rum and Albion gold have roused the Creeks' 
lust for rapine and blood. We are exposed to their 
incursions; let us carry the war into their country, 
and go in such numbers as to overwhelm them at once. 
Apathy on this subject would be criminal. The call 
of the country is the call of God." 

Not only did these mountain folk respond freely 
in the War of 1812, and in the Creek War, but they 
were among the first of volunteers, first in time and 
first in numbers, in the Seminole War, the war against 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 17 

Black Hawk, and the Mexican War. In the Mexican 
War almost ten times as many offered their services 
as were called for. 

By this time the population of the Southern Appa- 
lachians exceeded one million souls. 

As a whole they differed widely from the rest of the 
South, into which they were projected as a great wedge 
between the population of the Atlantic seaboard and 
that of the Mississippi Valley. The economic and 
social conditions of the aristocratic and baronial 
South were wholly lacking in the mountains, and the 
political alignments that resulted were the most 
marked westward from the Blue Ridge, the east- 
ern and southern slopes responding more generally 
to the political conditions of the lowland South. 
Therefore when the War of the Secession began the 
mountains of West Virginia, Kentucky and East 
Tennessee were overwhelmingly for the Union, while 
the proportion in the mountains of Virginia, the 
Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama was smaller. 

East Tennessee furnished over thirty thousand men 
to the Federal armies, the Second Congressional 
District having enlisted, in proportion to its population, 
more Union soldiers than did any Congressional District 
in the North itself. On the other hand, Jackson's 
famous brigade named the "Stonewall Brigade" was 
made up largely of these men of the hills. But, 
whether they fought on this side or on that, the men 
of the mountains had courage equal to their convictions, 
and showed themselves among the most valiant of 
soldiers. 

Unfortunately the lust of blood did not disappear 
with the cessation of war; and feuds, assassinations 



18 Round Robin 

and turmoil lasted in sections of the mountains for 
many years the mutual personal admiration of the 
warring "Yank" and "Johnny Reb" manifestly not 
existing where the two came from the same section. 

In the Spanish- American War of 1898 the mountains 
again yielded more than their quota of soldiers. "They 
were the best soldiers we had in the war," said one of 
the general officers. 

To-day the recruiting stations throughout the 
mountains are among the best feeders for the American 
army and navy. 

Such nas been the relation of this section to the 
public life of the nation. It declares that its people 
possess a virility and a fundamental worth that calls 
for admiration, whatever may be their passing evils 
or past drawbacks. 

III. Why They Fell Behind. 

When the first settlers came in they followed the 
valleys and occupied the most desirable portions of 
the land. So long as their numbers were few there 
was good land for all, but as the numbers grew the 
available good land was taken up and the late comers 
were forced to take second choice. So the hill-sides 
were settled. So a little later the tide flowed on up 
the mountains. Those earliest on the ground were, 
as a rule, the hardiest and most efficient; they remained 
in the great Valley; and they and their descendants 
have remained there since. 

Those who went back into the mountains were the 
weaker, the less efficient, the less far seeing, the more 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 19 

unfortunate. And their characteristics brought the 
same results that they always bring in those that are 
isolated, whether in a mountain or on a plain, — fatalism, 
apathy, and deterioration. 

It is universally true that when a family or a group 
of families is cut off from similar groups and prevented 
from exchange of ideas it tends increasingly to move 
in the line of least resistance, to regard itself as "in the 
fell grip of circumstance," to yield itself as the pawn of 
fate, and to rest in the assurance that whatever is, is 
because it was so determined. So effort is deemed 
vain if not profane, and deterioration sets in because 
the human being lives not as the master of environment 
but as its victim. The only exception to this universal 
experience that the isolated deteriorate was Robinson 
Crusoe. And he is a character of fiction. 

That deterioration would be their fate these settlers 
did not know when they thus made their homes. 
That it has been their fate most of them do not know 
to-day, because they are living in inherited and there- 
fore "natural" conditions; and inherited conditions 
are never unhappy conditions to those who are ignorant 
of better conditions. But in the judgment of those 
who did not inherit such conditions, the present status 
of the mountaineer is undesirable because he lives so 
far below his capability for living. He lives below his 
capability and he is unconscious of what he lacks 
because he has been unable to receive the physical, 
mental, and spiritual education essential to every 
life that is to move upward. 

Once settled, the pioneers were enmeshed by the 
reaction of the forces of want. The poor soil forbade 



20 Round Robin 

close neighborhood. It yielded meager harvests. It 
furnished scanty food. The insufficient food was ill 
cooked. The bodies were ill nourished. Physical 
energy and will were lessened. Only such labor was 
performed as sufficed to keep body and soul together. 
The children were pressed into service at the earliest 
moment. Since even physicians must have where- 
with to pay for what they get they were scarce, such 
as were available being generally self-constituted and 
worthless. The children could not be spared for 
school, and there was no money — and, in the minds of 
parents, no need — for a teacher. There was preaching 
and there was the religious sense, but there was little 
spiritual education. The preacher was himself a 
farmer, one of themselves, uneducated, illiterate, 
earnest, powerfully convincing his hearers that emotion 
is the one and only evidence of the work of the Holy 
Ghost, but seldom venturing into ethics, and when 
so venturing never rising above or departing from the 
conventional ethics of the neighborhood. In the 
largest conceivable sense the destruction of these poor 
was their poverty. 

Their nearest neighbors, the more prosperous of the 
lowland South, were those who should have come to 
their relief. But in the South as elsewhere in those 
days the social consciousness and the social conscience 
were alike undeveloped. Relationship to others had 
to run the gauntlet of "States' Rights," "local self- 
government," and "a man's house his castle," and few 
had a sense of responsibility for, or danger from, a 
remote and scattered multitude of ignorant mountain- 
eers who were out of sympathy with the prevailing 
Southern standards and sentiments. There might. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 21 

indeed, have been more sympathy on both sides if 
there had been more intercourse between Highland 
and Lowland; but the Highlanders were so poor that 
they could not move out, the Highlands themselves 
so poor that the Lowlanders cared not to move in, 
and the roads so poor that the main channels of travel 
avoided the entire region. 

This isolation from the larger South reached its 
climax just after the War of the Secession. The 
South bitterly resented the failure of the mountain 
people generally to go with their section. It pitied 
the West Virginian who fought in the Union army. It 
tolerated the Kentuckian. These were border states. 
But it destested the recalcitrant East Tennesseean, 
for he was in the very heart of the South. Ten years 
after the surrender at Appomatox a gentleman living 
near Memphis had occasion to write to a friend in 
Knoxville and addressed his letter to "Knoxville, East 
Tennessee." "I didn't know East Tennessee was a 
separate state," said a little boy fresh from his geography 
lesson. "It isn't," snapped the usually kind-spoken 
father," but it ought to be." The South let East 
Tennessee alone; and when the passions of those days 
are considered the South did about the wisest thing 
it could have done. East Tennessee let the South 
alone, and for many years lived its own life, self- 
contained and self-conscious, the richest and, with 
Eastern Kentucky, the least developed section of the 
Southern Highlands. 

When help finally came to these Highlanders it came 
not from the South but from the North. It came 
first in the shape of education and second in that 



22 Round Robin 

of industrial development; and in each case it joined 
its forces to those which the self-helpfulness of the 
Great Valley had developed. 

The first help came from the Northern Presbyterians 
who began on a small scale in 1879 and it found 
congenial soil in the Presbyterians who had come 
from the North and a help meet for itself in 
the schools which they had planted from one end 
of the Great Valley to the other. The Methodists 
and the Baptists followed in close succession with 
numerous schools, both day and boarding, both com- 
mon and collegiate. Then after a considerable interval 
the Church whose forlorn hope at Valle Crucis in 
1842 had long been abandoned and without a success- 
or finally began to open up academic and industrial 
and common schools. These various agencies will be 
discussed in a later chapter. 

The second help, that of industrial development, 
was not intended as a philanthropy. It was purely 
an attempt to make money out of the undeveloped 
resources that were found abundantly in almost every 
county of the whole Southern Highlands. The vast 
forests of hard wood, the copper, zinc, iron and coal, 
the marbles that equal or surpass those of Italy, and 
the water power of scores of mountain streams and 
rivers — the possibilities along so many lines drew 
many capitalists and investors, and built many lines 
of railway and hundreds of towns and villages, and by 
thrusting mining camps into mountain neighborhoods 
and erecting great manufacturing plants at the nearest 
railroad junctions, brought new possibilities and evils, 
new problems and opportunities, to be taken in hand 
by the forces of social construction and salvation. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 23 

The immediate result of this development was far 
from uplifting. Indeed, at first it was demoralizing. 
The sleeping mountain folk, who had been living the 
life and practising the virtues and vices of the eigh- 
teenth century, awoke to find the life of the twentieth 
century breaking upon them. The commercialized 
vice that attended the industrial development provided, 
in brothel and saloon, attractions and facilities and 
encouragements to evil doing that far exceeded those 
of sequestered slumber. 

But the sleeper was at last awakened. He was made 
to see that things could be changed. The great 
battle-ground of his scepticism as to novelties was in 
the realm of material things. That has been largely 
overcome by the evidence of ear and eye. Now that 
he has believed when convinced of natural things 
there is hope for his conviction along the line of those 
heavenly things that deal with the permanent nature 
of humanity. 

In this work not only the Great Valley itself has 
enlisted ,but the whole South is bestirring itself. It 
is fortunate, indeed, that, with the exception of West 
Virginia, all the states among which are divided 
the Southern Highlands slope down to the Lowlands 
and embrace a population that stands to the popula- 
tion of the mountains in the relation of "Big Brother." 
State pride partly, and legislative indissolubility 
chiefly, bind the interests of Louisville, Memphis, 
Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington, Norfolk 
and Richmond and those of all intervening territory 
in the same parcel with the interests of the rude moun- 
tain folk, with the result that the South is expending 



24 Round Robin 

large sums for better public education in the moun- 
tains, in better health, better housing, and better 
teaching, and is providing for the expenditure of vast 
sums for the building of roads that will give permanent 
accessibility. And the religious societies, too, though 
facing a three-fold problem of South-wide missions to 
the Negro and to the mill-hand, as well as to the 
mountain folk, are giving liberally of men, women and 
money to meet the demands of the spiritual necessities 
and possibilities in her own Highlands. 

IV. A Necessary Classification. 

There can be no greater mistake than to suppose 
that only one kind of population dwells in the Southern 
Highlands, and that this is the kind pictured in John 
Fox's stories, or in those of ''Charles Egbert Craddock" 
(Miss Murfree). This would not be the case anywhere 
in the world, and the topography of this region and the 
individualism of its inhabitant have served to empha- 
size differences. In studying our Mountain Problem 
these differences must not in any case be forgotten. 

Three classes, then, dwell in the Southern Highlands. 
They have been very happily defined by President 
Wilson of the Presbyterian College at Maryville, 
Tenn., as the Nominal Mountaineers, the Normal 
Mountaineers, and the Needy or Submerged Moun- 
taineers. 

The first class, the Nominal Mountaineers, occupy 
the valleys of the Shenandoah and the Tennessee and 
connecting valleys and plateaus, and have built the 
chain of cities beginning at Wheeling, W. Va., and 
Staunton, Va., and extending by way of Roanoke, 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 25 

Bristol, Johnson City, Asheville, Knoxville, and 
Chattanooga to Birmingham. Culture, wealth and 
refinement are conspicuous in these cities. From 
them many leading authors, artists, musicians, states- 
men and financiers have sprung, and in them many 
more are still living. The population of this class 
slightly exceeds that of the other two combined. Of 
course, the rude and the rough even here outnum.ber 
the cultured and refined. But though law does not 
sit enthroned in the bosom of every casual passer-by, 
yet this section is only a cross-section of the nation 
at large, and its divisions and problems do not differ 
in any important particular from, those of a similar 
population in any Northern state. Paradise has not 
been regained even though Virginia has its Shenandoah 
Valley ; the New Jerusalem has not come down though 
Knoxville has eighty-five houses of worship for its 
white people; but though conditions are far from ideal 
in even the most progressive cities and districts of the 
Valley the people there as a whole are able to over- 
come their own difficulties and solve their own problems. 
This class will therefore be eliminated from further 
consideration in this book, and whatever is hereafter 
said of "the mountain people" will be no more applicable 
to the Nominal Mountaineer than to the people of 
Philadelphia or of Boston. 

The second class is the class of Normal or Typical 
Mountaineers. These live not merely in sight of the 
mountains but among and on the mountains. They 
lack the polish and veneer of the larger world, and are 
equally lacking in its conveniences and "necessities." 
Rugged always and ragged often they stand on their 
rights as men. They eye superiority with suspicion. 



26 Round Robin 

and meet criticism with hostility. Do they in this 
regard differ from most of us? Is not the chief differ- 
ence this, that we veil our resentment toward the 
critic and the mountaineer does not? Much failure to 
appreciate these people is attributable to an initial 
misunderstanding, constituting a barrier which, once 
erected, the mountaineer never takes down. Since 
the enforced simplicity of their living is not Arcadian 
it is too often regarded as devoid of virtues. Inter- 
course based on this assumption is travelling a hopeless 
road. Many virtues they lack, indeed, and many 
vices they possess. But one vice they do not possess: 
Inhospitality. One fundamental virtue does character- 
ize them: Self-support. Their living may be of a 
narrowness in food, clothes and lodging that would be 
intolerable to ourselves, but if they cannot have more 
they are content with less. Each man applies to 
himself the Scriptural law: "If a man will not work 
neither shall he eat." And however narrow his living 
it is not too narrow to share with an utter stranger, 
from whom he hesitates or refuses to accept compen- 
sation in return. The cultured and refined of earth 
can go to the mountaineer and consider his ways, and 
learn from him that true hospitality which not only 
surrenders comfort but actually divides the bed and 
shares the last loaf with one whom he never saw before 
and will never see again. Self-support and hospitality 
are the bed-rock virtues of social life; they are the 
outstanding virtues of the mountain people; and 
they furnish a splendid foundation on which to build 
other necessary virtues. If they are ignorant of 
"book learning" they are not necessarily ignoramuses. 
They are generally able to take care of themselves. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 27 

Their honesty is equal to that of other people; but 
their shrewdness is also equal to that of others; and 
the maxim of the law, "Caveat emptor" ("Let the 
purchaser look to his own interests") is as applicable 
in Appalachia as in Connecticut. In fact, the Normal 
Mountaineer is a normal human being with character- 
istics conditioned by inheritance and environment; 
the kind of being we ourselves would be, similarly 
conditioned; needing assistance if he is to attain all 
that he is capable of attaining; but unwilling to 
accept any help that is not given in the spirit of sym- 
pathetic equality that can say in its deeds: "We are 
men of like passions with yourselves." 

The third class consists of the Needy or Submerged 
Mountaineers. "Of this class," President Wilson in 
his book "The Southern Mountaineers" says, "not 
so much good can be said. They correspond to, while 
they are entirely different from, that peculiar and 
pitiable lowland class of humanity that was one of the 
indirect products of the institution of slavery — 'the 
poor whites' or 'white trash,' as they used to be called. 
They are comparatively few, but are very incorrectly 
supposed by many readers of magazine articles to be 
typical of the entire body of southern mountaineers. 
By this mistaken supposition a mighty injustice is 
done to a very large majority of the dwellers in the 
Appalachians. As fairly judge England by 'Darkest 
England,' or London by Whitechapel, or New York 
by the slums, or any community by the submerged 
tenth. This third class consists of the drift, of the 
flotsam and jetsam, that are cast up here and there 
among the mountains. They are the shiftless, am- 
bitionless degenerates, such as are found wherever 



28 Round Robin 

men are found. Usually they own little or no land, 
and eke out a precarious existence, such as only a 
beneficent Providence that cares for the birds and 
other denizens of the forest could explain. They are 
those unfortunates that are found everywhere, whether 
in city or country, who sink to the bottom, and leave 
upper and middle classes above them. They are 
simply the lowest class in the mountains, and they 
deserve at our hearts and hands both sympathy and 
aid." 

If we ask ourselves, "What is the number of persons 
among all these classes that require our aid in attaining 
to their physical, intellectual and spiritual salvation?" 
the answer can be given only approximately. The 
divisions are not sharply defined. They merge into 
each other and on the large border the division must 
remain subjective and therefore variable. Thousands 
of the Nominal Mountaineers are found in the most 
remote districts. Hundreds of thousands of the 
Normal and the Needy Mountaineers are living in the 
Valleys. But with some degree of accuracy the 
figures may be estimated as follows: 

The population which can be entrusted to the care 
of the Nominal Mountaineer, and which therefore 
does not call for special study or assistance, from 
without, is about two and a half millions. 

Of the remaining population of a little less than two 
and a half millions the Normal Mountaineers number 
somewhat more than two millions and the Submerged 
Mountaineers a little less than a half million. 

Such is the nature and such the magnitude of the 
field that we now proceed to study at close range 
and more in detail. 



CHAPTER II. 

The famous monograph on "Snakes in Ireland," 
the entire text of which consisted of the six words, 
"There are no snakes in Ireland," was entirely too 
concise for satisfactory illumination of the subject. 
"If not, why not?" is a question that should have been 
answered. And one of a philosophic turn would 
like to ask another question: "Is the lack of snakes in 
Ireland a good thing for the intellectual and moral 
discipline of the Irish, or a bad thing?" 

One is reminded of this monograph in dealing with 
Social Conditions in the Appalachians. It cannot be 
said with finality, "There are no social conditions in 
Appalachia," but it can be said that beyond the 
family the social conditions are not far removed from 
nonexistence. 

A little figuring will demonstrate this fact. In the 
entire region, six hundred miles long and two hundred 
wide, five millions of people reside. That is, the 
population is less than fifty to the square mile. But 
this average includes the comparatively thickly popu- 
lated Greater Valley Belt, in whose twenty thousand 
square miles one half of the entire population lives. 
In the remaining eighty thousand square miles live 
two and a half millions of people, or an average of 
little more than thirty to the square mile. This is ten 
times as dense a population as that of corresponding 
regions in the Rocky Mountains, but is only one- 
sixth as dense as the population of the principal New 
England States. And since these thirty persons 
include all the men, women and children, and the 
children are numerous to an extent almost incredible 



30 Round Robin 

in this day of small families elsewhere, our figures 
mean that the population averages not more than three 
or four families to the square mile. Over the larger 
part of the mountains it is even less than this, for 
''the average population" is largely taken up by the 
little towns, villages and hamlets in which are found 
from fifty to five hundred inhabitants. In sections 
of the Cimiberlands and Great Smokies one may travel 
for days without finding a sign of habitation, and in 
fact many have so travelled till they have perished of 
starvation, 

I. Obstacles to Social Intercourse. 

Three noteworthy factors still further reduce the 
social possibilities involved in the presence of three or 
four families to the square mile. These are: (1) The 
topography of the square mile, (2) The nature of its 
flora, and (3) The location of the homes. Other 
factors present themselves after we enter the homes: 
(4) Their diminutiveness, and (5) The taciturnity of 
their inhabitants. 

Practically the only level space in the whole square 
mile is that which is covered by the house, but often, 
level space being entirely lacking, the house is perched 
on a mountain-side rising one foot in five. Up and 
down the bed of a tiny rivulet one may stumble over 
rocks and roots a few hundred yards perhaps without 
a great deal of climbing; but a few feet away on either 
side of the house the mountain rises more steeply 
than the house-roof itself, at an angle of from forty 
to eighty degrees. It rises thus for several hundred or 
several thousand feet, and from a summit only a few 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 31 

feet or a few yards wide it drops with equal abruptness 
into anottier valley, which may or may not be isihabited. 
If neighbors live in two such adjoining valleys, (and 
a third often intervenes) they may be only a mile apart 
according to long measure, but in the real measure of 
energy expended they are five or ten miles apart. In 
the majority of cases roads cannot be built, because 
practicable grades and sufficient funds cannot be 
secured. The only substitute is "the trail," a more 
or less indistinguishable foot-path which goes almost 
straight up the mountain, and which demands the toll 
of strong lungs, strong heart, and strong knees, and, 
in the case of one who is new at it, massage and long 
hours of rest at the end. It is no great exaggeration 
to say that the energy expended in a trip from one 
valley to another is comparable only to that expended 
in climbing or descending a ladder for a like distance. 

The nature of the covering of this mountain roof adds 
to the difficulty of communication. Unlike the Rocky 
Mountains the Southern Applachians are all verdure- 
clad. Not only does every variety of hard-wood 
cover the entire country, trees appearing to grow 
out of the very surface rock itself; this might add 
only to the comfort of travel. But the undergrowth 
is of almost tropical luxuriance, and offers tropical 
opposition to travel. Here is the experience of a 
naturalist as quoted by Kephart in "Our Southern 
Highlanders:" "A trail that runs through blackberry 
bushes two miles out of three is hard to follow. Then 
there was a huckleberry bush reaching to our waists 
growing as thickly upon the ground as tomato vines, 
curled hard, and stubborn; and laurel much like a 
field of lilac bushes, crooked and strong as iron. In one 



32 Round Robin 

place we walked fully a quarter of a mile over tops of 
laurel bushes and these were ten or twelve feet in height, 
but blown over one way by the wind." With sur- 
roundings of this sort, with footing on loose and scanty 
soil or on hard and insecure and flaking rock, and with 
the possibility of an unannounced cloud suddenly 
enveloping the mountain so thick that one cannot see 
a tree ten feet away, it is no wonder that social inter- 
course is less frequent than when the neighbor lives 
"just around the corner in the next block." And we 
can readily credit the statement that "the people on 
the north side of Pine Mountain, averaging only a 
mile thick, know less about those on the south side 
than a Maine Yankee does about Pennsylvania Dutch- 
men." or that "there are men in these mountains of 
Kentucky who have never seen a town or even the poor 
village that constitutes their county seat. The women 
are as rooted as trees." One woman during twelve 
years of married life had lived only ten miles across the 
mountain from her own home, but had never in this 
time been back to visit her father and mother. Another 
had never been to the post-office only four miles away. 
Another had never been even to the country store only 
two miles distant. 

But why did the mountain people build their homes 
in separate valleys, at the extreme distance from 
others? Why did they not build near, or at, the top 
of the mountains, thus getting better air and closer 
neighborhood, and escaping the many hours of mist 
that linger in the coves while the peaks are bright 
with the morning sun? 

For the very practical reasons that they wanted to 
be near the water, near the gurgling stream if not 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 33 

hard by the stream itself, and for the further 
reason that it is easier to bring both the rough material 
and the finished product down the hill than to carry- 
it up. In some sections in quite recent years the 
increasing denudation of the forests has brought on 
floods more frequent and compelled the removal 
of houses a few hundred feet up the mountain; 
but the vast majority of homes remain and will con- 
tinue to remain where they were erected so long ago. 

Being kept at home by these difficulties the moun- 
taineer lacks the free com^municativeness or loquacity 
of the city dweller. His words are few and far between, 
because long ago he had communicated to those about 
him the experiences, observations, and reflections of 
his life, and whatever he now says will of necessity 
be a repetition of what he said last month or last year. 
Knowing that this is true of others too he does not 
spend his time gadding. Long periods of silence 
alternating with short periods of slowly moving con- 
versation characterize social visiting, and the nervous 
stranger who seeks to overcome both the silence and 
the slow movement with incessant volubility finds 
himself misunderstood and disliked. 

And finally the homes are so small that the people 
refrain from visiting out of mutual consideration. 
Seldom does the house consist of as many as three 
rooms. Comfortable, indeed, is that home which 
comprises two rooms with an open covered porch 
between. Ordinarily the entire family have but one 
room, from sixteen to twenty feet square, with a 
little adjoining shed or "lean-to," for cooking, and in 
this limited space the family life is lived day and night, 



34 Round Robin 

from birth to death. Not infrequently three genera- 
tions constitute the family so cribbed, cabined and 
confined. Similar conditions are found in New York, 
Philadelphia, or Baltimore; but they seem especially 
deplorable in the mountains, where front-foot valuation 
is unheard of, and where the people have "all out of 
doors" to build in. 

II. Social Conditions in the Home 

When the social conditions of the mountain folk 
are considered, it is evident that those of the home 
overshadow all others. When an attempt is made to 
describe the home it must be understood that the 
description is composite. No one feature is found in 
all, and some features are absent from many, but in 
general outlines the following description is correct : 

The family have been sleeping for many hours 
scattered on beds and pallets of the severest and most 
meagerly furnished kind, the slats of the former and 
the floor under the latter being much in evidence, and 
the faded, dirty, and musty quilts of a vintage of ten 
or twenty years ago thrusting the fact of their exis- 
tence on the olfactories of the stranger. Some have 
slept in the room and some in the loft overhead, reached 
by a ladder. Though the house is built of logs and 
chinked, and the doors and windows have been shut 
tight, there has been no lack of air; for the chinking 
has dropped from the logs, the ground is visible in 
many places through the cracks and knot-holes in the 
floor, and the capacious chimney stack could ventilate 
a moderate sized hotel. Refreshed, they look with 
little interest on a scene which is far more interesting 
because more novel. Two wooden beds and two pallets 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 35 

on the floor, one or two "split-bottom" rocking chairs, 
and one or two straight chairs of the same construction, 
never painted and now grown dark and finally all but 
black, a short deal table, and an upturned drygoods 
box, flanked by a tin trunk bought many years ago 
for $>1.50 — this is the furniture. On the wall hang the 
unused clothes of the family; they do not take much 
space. With unstudied alternation also hang dried 
edibles — apples, peppers, herbs, perhaps some tobacco, 
and a string of okra. 

The process of getting dressed is simple. "Getting 
ready for bed" meant only to "loosen up." "Getting 
up" means only to tighten up. There are no night 
clothes, there are seldom any underclothes. "Why make 
such a fuss about sleepin'?" asked one. A toilet so 
simple is in keeping with the miscellaneous herding of 
so many persons, and, in truth, obviates some of the 
objections to such congestion. Those who care to 
wash face and hands are at liberty to do so; no offense 
is taken. But no questions or comments are offered 
if one overlooks this part of the toilet. The housewife 
herself generally does overlook it. 

She has to get breakfast, and the toilet can wait. 
And to get breakfast she has neither gas stove nor 
range. She has the fireplace, and some pots and pans 
and skillets. In the skillet she fries some sow-belly 
or pork of the cheapest white variety, which comes to 
the table "reeking in grease," as one told the writer he 
liked his meat. The bread is made of flour, but the 
biscuits into which it is made are almost of the 
dimensions and specific gravity of the two-hundred 
pound weight on the grocers' scales,; and those who 



36 Round Robin 

have not been hardened sufficiently to digest them 
prefer the cold "pone bread" of yesterday's dinner, which 
is set on for breakfast along with even colder "greens" of 
the turnip or of the "collard" variety. There is not 
enough tableware to go around, and — "Fingers were 
made before forks," so why trouble? Why may not 
the children take their supplies from the plate of 
father or mother? Or, for that matter, why have 
intermediate resting places for the food, when all 
may go to the one bowl, or tin plate, or large dish, and 
eat directly thence, in a modification of the buffet 
luncheon? 

To dismiss the matter of fare once for all: Kephart 
in "Our Southern Higlanders" gives a glimpse of 
frequent conditions in this picture which is not at all 
exaggerated: "Even to families that are fairly well-to- 
do there will come periods of famine, such as Lincoln, 
speaking of his boyhood, called 'pretty pinching 
times.' Hickory ashes then are used as a substitute 
for soda in biscuits, and the empty salt-gourd will be 
soaked for brine to cook with. Once, when I was 
boarding with a good family, our stores ran out of 
everything, and none of our neighbors had the least 
to spare. We had no meat of any kind for two weeks 
(the game had migrated), and no lard or other grease 
for nearly a week. Then the meal and salt played 
out. One day we were reduced to potatoes 'straight,' 
which were parboiled in fresh water, and then burnt 
a little on the surface as substitute for salt. Another 
day we had not a bite but string-beans boiled in un- 
salted water. _ _ .Occasionally, as at 'hog-killin' 
time' the poorest live in abundance; occasionally, as 
at Christmas, they will go on sprees. But, taking 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 37 

them the year through, the Highlanders are a notably 
abstemious race. When a family is reduced to dry 
corn-bread and black coffee unsweetened — so much 
and no more — it will joke about the lack of meat and 
vegetables. And, when there is meat, two mountaineers 
engaged in hard out-door work will consume less of 
it than a northern office-man would eat. Indeed, 
the heartiness with which 'furriners' stuff themselves 
is a wonder and a merriment to the people of the hills." 

When the breakfast is over the members of the 
household betake themselves, gradually and without 
undue haste, to their respective occupations. 

The husband and father goes to the field which, 
thin-soiled and infested with stones and gravel, hangs 
precariously on the mountain-side. It is incredible 
that anyone can maintain his footing at such an angle, 
and equally incredible that any plant can root itself 
and grow. Sometimes a hill of corn or of squashes 
has to be propped up on one side with stones to keep 
it from washing or simply falling away. In some places 
the cultivated slope ends on the brink of a precipice; 
in which case color is given to the story that a man in 
the mountains once broke his neck by falling off his 
farm. 

The wife and mother gathers and prepares whatever 
green thing may be available for dinner, makes lye 
soap in the big pot in the yard, or goes to the loom, or 
does the family washing, or sits knitting, or droops 
drowsing. Or she goes out with the axe to chop 
wood for the fire, or with the hoe to do a man's work as 
well as a woman's. Her activities and inactivities are 
varied by the disciplining of the half-dozen little 



38 Round Robin 

children, who are roHing around Hke so many Httle 
kittens, and solace is taken from her many cares by an 
occasional dip of snuff. * 

The children seldom go to school, for when schools 
exist the school term is only from three to five months 
and any conceivable excuse suffices to keep the children 
at home. Organized sports they have none. The 
little ones do not need them for infant imagination 
can build up a world from a stick, a rag, or a piece 
of broken glass; but the older ones come to a point 
where, without instruments of play, they wander about 
first aimlessly and then mischievously. Before they 
come to their ''teens" their favorite pastime is that of 
throwing rocks — at marks inanimate, animal, or 
human. With the approach of adolescence the com- 
bination of neglect, publicity, and careless if not evil 
conversation by their elders, has opened up to them 
the vices of unrestrained virility, and evil habits have 
been formed which endure through life. Children are 
punished, not for correction and discipline, but because 
of a passing gust of anger. They are not trained 
because the parents themselves are not trained. They 
do what they are forced or bribed to do in the matter 
of work, and then betake themselves to their favorite 
pastimes. 

This schedule goes on year after year without any 
change other than the growing maturity of the 
children already in the family, and the addition of 
another child each year. At a remarkably early age, 
from sixteen to eighteen, the boy marrieis a girl of 
from fourteen to seventeen years, and either they 
live under the parental roof — sometimes in the parental 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 39 

room — or the neighborhood has a "log-raisin" and within 
twelve hours has built a one-room house in which the 
entire married life of the young couple will reproduce 
in all particulars the households which they left. 
The young man married, but without chivalry for 
woman either before marriage or after. The young 
woman married, but without visions or ideals before 
marriage or after. The children came, and the neces- 
sity of dividing the same possessions among an increas- 
ing number of mouths and bodies kept the life of the 
family down to purely material thoughts and consid- 
erations, whose dominant note was, because of intel- 
lectual stagnation, not despair but apathy, 

III. Social Relationship With Neighbors. 

The same caution is to be observed in generalizing 
of neighborhood social conditions as in generalizing 
of those of the home. Elements are present that are 
not universal, and elements are lacking that are found 
in some neighborhoods. The picture is general, not 
particular. 

The neighborhood is large in extent, small in popu- 
lation, permanent in its composition, and most 
remarkably inter-related by marriage. Therefore there 
are no lines of social cleavage, no barriers to the freest 
intercourse of family with family and of person with 
person. All occasions of a public character are attended 
by the entire neighborhood, and the life and antece- 
dents of every one present are thoroughly known. 

The occasions of public gathering are quilting bees, 
"log-raisings," "young folks' parties," "preaching," 



40 Round Robin 

and burials; and, more frequently and informally, 
the chance meetings at the mill and the store, where 
by tacit agreement groups stand or sit around for 
several hours, giving and receiving the personal experi- 
ences of the past week. 

The "log-raising" is the compliment which, when a 
new house is to be occupied, the neighbors pay to the 
new tenant. The logs have all been prepared and 
measured and mortised, and on the appointed day the 
brawn of the mountain-side gathers to lift the dead 
weight into place, log by log. The women are also 
present, preparing the mid-day meal which gives the 
social tone to the gathering. 

The "quilting bees" are exclusively feminine in 
personnel, the neighbors assisting in the tacking of 
the quilts whose owner has for months, perhaps years, 
been slowly accmnulating scraps of calico or of velvet 
and sewing them into patterns, and who is now ready 
for the pieces to take their place, and for the bed 
covering of the years to come to be added to the 
scanty family treasures. 

The "young folks' parties" have no semblance of 
seriousness. Everything is done for fun and a good 
time. If there has been no "revival" recently the 
probability is that there will be dancing to the accom- 
paniment of fiddle, or occasionally of accordion. The 
musician is the master of the feast. He calls the 
figures and his word is law. His friendly nod or rare 
word of greeting is prized as highly as a king's by his 
courtiers; though next morning, the occasion of his 
glory past, he is plain Bill or Tom, and meets no more 
respect than any other neighbor. If dancing be barred, 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 41 

there are games in abundance that the swains and 
damsels are not loath to play — games most of which 
have kissing as reward or forfeit, or the choosing of 
partners as an evidence of feminine favor; for the 
young people are simply great roistering boys and girls. 

"Preaching" is however the occasion of most general 
satisfaction. This is due not so much to the sense of 
religion as to the fact that this is the recognized full- 
dress opportunity for social intercourse. It comes 
only once a month, and it is attended by all. Most 
aggressive in attendance are dogs, and babes in arms, 
whose interruptions of salute or of discontent, however, 
do not appear to disconcert either the preacher or the 
hearers. It is also an immemorial custom that two 
of the youths shall rise in the midst of the sermon, and 
from brimming buckets with fresh gourds or bright 
tin dippers "water the congregation." But it is not 
necessary that all shall go within the building. Groups 
of like-minded gather at various places within or about 
the open clearing in which sits the place of worship — 
this group exchanging experiences in planting, hunting, 
or going to town; that deep in ribald jest or obscene 
story, and perhaps back a little among the trees a few 
young couples "courting." Occasionally those out- 
side will enter the building and participate in the 
exercises for a half hour or an hour and then return to 
the outside. The nearest parallel to this in the Church 
in the cities is the coming and going of people at the 
Three Hours' Service on Good Friday. In both cases 
the service continues with a changing constituency, but 
with the same ministry and same bodyguard of the 
faithful. Basket dinners are eaten on the grounds 
before the second sermon, if there is one; and when all 



42 Round Robin 

is over everyone starts home satisfied in some way — 
the patriarch satisfied with his prayer, the householder 
with his bargain, the lover with his progress, the small 
boy with his story, the mother with her remedy, the 
lass with her looks; and (shall it be added?) the preacher 
with the salvation which he offered and so many accep- 
ted. It was, indeed, a day of social refreshment, 
entirely apart from its religious import. 

The occasion of a burial, though the most sombre of 
all, has social connotations. If the circuit rider is too 
far away to be secured — and he generally is — a "local 
preacher" may be obtained. In the lack of both some 
person of supposedly superior spiritual gifts is placed 
in charge of the service, which in this event will consist 
of a hymn and "a brief word of prayer." The coffin is of 
the rudest, being made for the occasion out of any 
rough plank to be obtained in the vicinity, or it may 
even be hewn from freshly cut timber. Without 
handles it is placed upon two or three poles and so 
carried to the grave by neighbors. The grave itself is 
shallow, and irregular in shape. Here again the hands 
of friendship perform the last offices. One by one 
the oldest and nearest of friends throw in a few shovels 
of earth, and are then superseded by the younger, 
and the grave is filled rapidly. It is an indifferent 
man or youth who does not take some part in this 
work of sympathy. Incidentally, a youth often 
signifies his assumption of manhood by "helpin' bury 
ole man Blank," and he is thereafter taken at his own 
measurement. But while the burial itself, though 
simple, takes all day and is seized as an opportunity 
for intercourse and mutual inquiry on domestic topics, 
the death takes on full dignity only when "the funeral 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 43 

sermon" is preached, anywhere from three months to 
three years later. While Kephart thinks this custom 
"has no analogue elsewhere" than in the Southern 
mountains, the writer is familiar with it in other 
sections. One occasion rises to memory vividly when 
he heard a negro evangelist in Southern Virginia ask 
the indulgence of his congregation for a little huskiness 
in his voice one Sunday night, "because," he said, "I 
preached seven funerals at Blackstone this afternoon," 
Inquiry developed the fact that such an experience did 
not indicate excessive mortality : the funeral discourses 
had been reserved for what seemed good reason and 
they were finally delivered in a single eulogy when a 
preacher of desirable eloquence arrived. This is not 
essentially different from the good custom observed by 
many Bishops, who preface their Convention ad- 
dresses with appreciation and laudatory remarks of 
the noteworthy Churchmen deceased within a twelve- 
month. And these mountain folk came to these ser- 
mons of personalities with precisely the gusto with 
which the multitudes in the city flock to hear the 
preaching of concrete personalities by the popular 
evangelist rather than that of abstract philosophizing 
by the quiet teacher. In the mountains and out of 
the mountains the same rule holds good that the 
masses of mankind are moved more by the emotions 
than by intelligence, more by sentiment than by 
duty; therefore it is that the announcement of a fun- 
eral sermon to be preached at a certain time ensures 
a church crowded to its capacity. 

It is worth while at this place once more to stress the 
fact that the Highlander, just because he is a human, 
rational being, like all other men, has certain provin- 



44 Round Robin 

cialisms and peculiarities of thought and speech and 
action; and also that like the rest of us he has explana- 
tion and reason for his peculiarities. "Peculiar" 
and "provincial" are terms that we use too freely and 
too lightly. They mean only "unfamiliar"; and to 
condemn peculiarities and provincialisms without 
investigation of the reason for their existence is to be 
guilty of that prevalent folly of making our own 
familiarity with a habit or a custom the measure of 
its right to be. The stranger who goes into the heart 
of the mountains is as peculiar in his habits to the 
mountain people as the mountain people are to him, 
and his ears would burn if he knew what they were 
thinking of him and his ill-concealed sense of superiority. 
In truth, it may as well be said, certain of our own 
customs in circles of refinement, as well as in other 
circles, would give the Appalachian Traveller not less 
than the Chinese Traveller opportunity for letters of 
criticism to the home people. He would contrast the 
multitude of knives, forks, spoons and unrecognized 
utensils of eating that confuse the unwary guest with 
the Spartan simplicity of his own table, and balance 
the necessitated meagerness of mountain dress by the 
even more voluntarily meagre dress at a dinner or on 
the beach. His criticism might be foolish. "We can 
tell him," we say, "why these things are," That is 
true. On the other hand, he can do the same. If 
the mountain folk are peculiar to us, we are peculiar 
to them. If our customs are better than theirs we 
cannot commend them by condemning those whom we 
would help. Often a little better understanding on 
our own part will either remove our objection to their 
custom or will open up to us the way by which we can 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 45 

commend a better custom. But if we ourselves do 
not consistently apply the rule which we commend we 
may as well not commend it. 

IV. The Point of View 

As a concrete example take the case of the "moon- 
shiner" or "blockader," who distils liquor without 
license and against the law of the United States. The 
usual conception is that the moonshiner is a lawless, 
untrustworthy desperado of the old-time "cow-boy" 
type, and that in spirit he is of the same breed as 
bandits and pirates. This picture of him seemis 
justified to us by his free use of fire-arms in repelling 
revenue agents. 

Yet if we would put ourself in his place we would 
find that something is to be said in extenuation of his 
lawlessness. Why should he not take such part of 
his corn as he pleases, and turn it into whiskey? If 
he turns part into meal to eat, and the government 
does not place a prohibitory tax on him for grinding 
what he wants, what right has the government prac- 
tically to forbid him to distil his sour mash for his own 
consumption? The right is not claimed by the govern- 
ment on moral grounds: revenue is the only ground 
for the constant spying and arresting and convicting 
of the mountain people. Public opinion in the moun- 
tains is that the government discriminates unjustly in 
so hounding illicit distillers, tram.pling on the inalienable 
right of man to put the labor of his hand into what 
form may please him. 

Unable to perceive equity in the assault of might on 
right the illicit distillers proceed to meet might with 



46 Round Robin 

might, and they take their own Hves against those of 
the deputies who are wilhng to come in as agents of 
injustice. The man who faces the penitentiary for 
exercising his freedom, and in going to the penitentiary 
leaves helpless wife and children to shift for themselves, 
will not hesitate, if need be, to destroy the life of the 
man who forces him to the alternatives. 

Let it be borne in mind that the question with him 
is not at all as to the undesirability or obnoxiousness 
of whiskey; it has to do purely with personal freedom 
and governmental injustice. And not a few reputable 
citizens in more cultured communities find reasons, no 
better but just as satisfactory, for evading laws that, 
in their opinion, bear on them unjustly. 

Consideration of the subject of moonshining leads to 
the allied matters of drinking and killing, confessedly 
the most prevalent evils of the mountains. And if to 
these we add, what in some sections is common, but in 
commonness is not peculiar to the mountains, easiness 
in sexual relationship, we have the trinity of evils that 
blight the mountain life. 

The three are the temptations that belong to out- 
door virility everywhere, and the narrowed interests 
of the lives of the mountain folk and the energizing 
effect of the bracing mountain air combine to make 
them not more shameless but less ashamed. And 
when this is said, something more must be said: The 
doers of these evils are only a fraction in any community 
at a given time, but they do not lose caste because of 
their doings. The neighbors are not indifferent to the 
doing of evil. They are not moved with especial 
charity to the wrong-doer. But before all else stands 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 47 

individual liberty of action, and until that liberty 
crowds another's liberty intolerably one is not criticised 
for exercising it. 

The confirmed and steady drinker is found in every 
settlement, and due allowance is made for him in 
what he says and does, but the majority drink at 
irregular intervals. Not every community has a still, 
and the supply must be brought in and paid for by 
those who lack both still and means. When two or 
three dollars a gallon must be paid by those who do not 
see so much money in a month or two it is evident that 
habitual drinking is out of question for the general 
run. But when a holiday approaches, preeminently 
Christmas and New Year, the strictest economy is 
practiced for weeks and months before to save up 
money wherewith to buy enough whiskey with which 
to "celebrate." The men do not act selfishly in its 
use. The women and children, and often the very 
babes in arms, take part in the drinking on these 
occasions. And what they drink is not pure corn 
whiskey any more. It used to be; but a distiller 
once informed the writer that he added tobacco, 
essence of ginger, and red pepper to give it the right 
burn. Some are said even to add washing lye. No 
wonder that such evil spirits taken in beget spirits 
even more evil that come out. Whiskey of this sort, 
it has been said, "will set a jack-rabbit a-chasin' a 
bull-dog." 

While the taking of human life can often be traced to 
drunkenness it is not always or even generally so. 
The Highlander lives in the eighteenth century, not 
in the twentieth, and he has not come to the twentieth 



48 Round Robin 

century valuation of life and abhorrence of violent 
death. The right of private warfare is still claimed 
by him, and with it the right to a choice of methods 
and arms. To him there is nothing worse in slashing 
with a knife or shooting with a pistol or gun than in 
smashing with bare fists. The primitive passions 
seek primitive methods of redress, and those methods 
are the best with him which will the most promptly 
and permanently disable the adversary. Every man 
is his own policeman, judge, jury and executioner; 
the country is too sparsely settled and the individual- 
ism is yet too marked to permit the keeping of the 
peace to be delegated. For the purpose of protection 
(or of aggression) most of the men of the mountains 
go armed, their weapons generally concealed. A 
stout hickory stick, not unlike a shillelagh; or "brass 
knucks" which are the steel armor of the right hand 
and crush in the face like an egg-shell; or a revolver 
of large calibre; or a rifle or a shot-gun; — these furnish 
the means for carrying into full effect the impulse 
of anger, or the deadly purpose of a feud, or the resent- 
ment of unpleasing words. In the westernmost 
judicial district of North Carolina the statistics show 
that in the counties where life is most valued there is 
one homicide annually for every 2,500 population, 
and that the rate in some counties is as high as one 
for every 1,000 population. This rate is about six 
times as great as it is in the entire United States, thirty 
times as great as it is in Italy of the stiletto, and 
nearly one hundred times the rate in Germany. 

Deplorable as is this disregard of life, for which the 
law seldom exacts reparation, it is not amazing that 
it should be so when the very preachers have been 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 49 

known to fight physically after verbal debate on 
theological questions about which both were ignorant, 
and on more occasions than one to engage in conflicts 
with knives. Kephart, the most dispassionate student 
and writer on mountain conditions, says: "The High- 
lander is no worse than the bygone age that he really 
belongs to. In some ways he is better. He is far less 
cruel than his ancestors were — than our ancestors 
were. He does not torture with the tumbril, the 
stocks, the ducking-stool, the pillory, the branding- 
irons, the ear-pruners and nostril-shears and tongue- 
branks that were in every-day use under the old 
criminal code. He does not tie a woman to the cart's 
tail and publicly lash her back until it streams with 
blood, nor does he hang a man for picking somebody's 
pocket of twelve pence and a farthing. He does not 
go slumming in bedlam, paying tuppence for the 
sport of mocking the maniacs until they rattle their 
chains in rage or horror. He does not turn executions 
of criminals into public festivals. He never has been 
known to burn a condemned one at the stake. If he 
hangs a man, he does not first draw his entrails and 
burn them before his eyes, with a mob crowding 
about to jeer the poor devil's flinching or to com- 
pliment him on his "nerve." Yet all these pleasan- 
tries were proper and legal in Christian Britain two cent- 
uries ago." 

Sexual relationship is determined and limited by the 
same considerations of personal freedom to act accord- 
ing to personal desire until that desire crosses the 
desire of another. It is rendered more irregular by 
the lack of chivalry to woman. The romance of the 
fluttering heart is not known in the mountains. The 



50 Round Robin 

woman was made for the man — for his pleasure, his 
comfort, his service — and the man so regards her and 
uses her. And the woman, never having known of 
any other possible status, accepts the relation as a 
matter of course, and would probably despise a husband 
who viewed her in any more favorable light. The 
girls must marry early and bear a large family to their 
husbands. Sometimes they bear a family without 
marrying; and, if they care for their children, they 
do not permanently lose caste. The writer personally 
knows of one such who reared her family never having 
had a husband, and who was received by her neighbors 
on terms of absolute equality. If an unmarried girl 
becomes a mother the offending man may have to 
leave the neighborhood for six months or a year, but 
after the first ebullition the transaction is regarded as 
an accomplished fact, which would not be bettered by 
taking a life; and gradually the unmarried mother 
resumes her life, with just another little body to be 
clothed and mouth to be fed. Bad as this is it might 
be compared without disadvantage to social conditons 
elsewhere. It has not the added evil of marital 
infidelity. The loyalty of husband and wife to each 
other is without equal in the world even if, as is 
occasionally the case, the husband has two wives. 
Paid prostitutes are not tolerated in a settlement. The 
social evil is almost entirely in the undisciplined 
affections and passions of the unmarried, especially 
in the brazen and aggressive initiative of the young 
men. 

To sum up: The Highlander's ethics are determined 
by the relation which his own right to free and untram- 
meled self-expression bears to the equal rights of others. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 51 

He scrupulously observes the rights of others until he is 
convinced that they have forfeited their rights. When 
he is so convinced he has no scruple in pressing his 
own claim to what he wants, whether by fraud, by 
force, or by cunning. He will stand by his friend; 
he will stand against his enemy; but he will stand 
first for himself. 



CHAPTER III. 

"Hold up your hand. If you want to be saved 
hold up your hand. Salvation is just and free and as 
easy as that. Hold up your hand and you will be 
saved." 

This was the fervid "proposition" of a preacher of 
more than ordinary intelligence to a congregation of 
less than ordinary intelligence at the dedication of a 
new house of worship in the Southern Appalachians. 
Five men were at once saved on these terms, and 
were reported by the evangelist as so many "souls 
saved." 

The incident was not unique. It gives a fair idea 
of the religion of the mountain folk. If we are incred- 
ulous as to the fact we have not kept abreast of much 
modern revivalism in some of our large cities, and we 
have not informed ourselves on the history of religion 
and on the yet widespread conviction that religion 
and conduct are absolutely independent. If, however, 
we keep it in mind that the mountain people are yet 
drifting in the backwater of the current of thought 
their religious and devotional point of view will take 
its place naturally along with their other character- 
istics, and we shall not be surprised that religion as 
they understand it lacks many of the attributes that 
we have learned to associate with it. 

I. Some General Principles 

Reduced to its lowest terms, religion is fundamentally 
a sense of the unseen, or spiritual, and of a relation 
between it and ourselves. If it is to influence our 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 53 

lives this relation must be a relation of dependence on 
our side and of response on the other, and if it is to 
be anything more than an empty phrase it must be the 
relation of intelligence with intelligence, of trust with 
responsibility, and of service with due recognition. 
Browning, in his "Caliban upon Setebos," gives a fine 
dissertation on the different phases of natural religion 
without moral manifestation. And Virgil in his 
"Aeneid" naively shows how a pagan acting treacher- 
ously towards the confiding Dido could yet call himself 
"pious." 

The conception that men have of the God whom 
they worship determines the kind of service they 
will offer their deity; just as, on the other hand, the 
kind of worship men offer their deity shows what 
kind of God they think he is. He may be a whimsical 
tyrant who must be worshipped by flattery or cajolery; 
or he may be a being of justice, mercy and reality, 
who is best worshipped by the reproduction of these 
qualities in the worshipper. 

Our perception of our relation to him may have the 
beautiful simplicity of that woman's who said of 
Christ "If I may but touch the hem of his garment 
I shall be made whole;" or it may be as rational 
as was that captain's who said "I also have servants 
under me, and when I say to one 'Do this' he doeth 
it. Speak the word and my servant shall be healed;" 
but when, whether superstitiously or intelligently, we 
make our appeal to the God and Father of us all with 
the best member that we have there can be no doubt 
that our worship is acceptable to God and that he 
gives rich return to our honesty and sincerity. "If 



54 Round Robin 

there is, to begin with, a mind that wills the right,^it 
is given to a man not according to what he hath not 
but according to what he hath." There are as many 
varieties of religious experience as there are varieties 
of men; and since intelligence has innumerable grada- 
tions, and shades imperceptibly into credulity, and 
credulity is but the older of twins and its brother is 
superstition, it transcends the wit of men to dogmatize 
as to the exact place where the religious sense exchan- 
ges utility for futility. 

It is necessary to be reminded of these general 
principles when we study the religion of the Southern 
Highlander, because the manifestation of his religion 
puts a strain on our comprehensiveness, if not on our 
toleration, a strain that we can bear only when his 
evident sincerity is met by our large sympathy. 

The religious connections in the mountains are 
almost entirely Protestant. Roman Catholicism has 
in recent years planted aggressive outposts and 
organized its work with the intention of making 
itself felt as a religious force among these people, but 
so far it has made practically no impression. With 
Scottish antecedents the ecclesiastical traditions must 
necessarily be Protestant ; but within the limits of the 
word Protestant — which to them means anti-Papal, 
or non-Roman, and may embrace even Mormonism— 
the affiliations of the people are widely varied, unim- 
portant and frequently changing. Originally Presby- 
terian, they lacked Presbyterian preachers, and what 
happened to the Church in the lowlands of Alabama 
and Mississippi happened to the Presbyterian commun- 
ion in the highlands of Tennessee and Virginia. It 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 55 

lost thousands of its members through its failure to 
provide ministrations in the day of small things. 
But Baptist and Methodist preachers were there. 
Considered as preachers they were extremely ignorant. 
So were their hearers, even more ignorant. Con- 
gregations were organized, but loosely. The preacher 
was often unpaid, and the larger organization was too 
glad that the sheep were shepherded to look critically 
into the intellectual qualifications of the shepherds. 

Neither preachers nor people were checked in their 
vagaries, and finally the distinctive doctrines of the 
different communions lost their identity in a shifting 
kaleidoscopic presentation of doctrine, as first one 
preacher came and then another, to show their various 
more or less impossible combinations of spiritual 
imaginings. With the loss of characteristic teaching 
the ties of loyalty were loosed. "One church is as 
good as another" was their dictum — always excepting 
the Roman Catholic, which was purely pagan and 
idolatrous. The "power" of the latest preacher 
determined the special membership; and those who, 
having been converted, joined the Baptist denomination 
one year were found at the end of a revival a year 
later zealous members of the Methodist — albeit wor- 
shipping with the same kind of service and preacher 
in the same building used on another Sunday by a 
preacher of another communion preaching to the same 
congregation. These two, the Methodist and the 
Baptist, swept the field of religion; but were utterly 
unable to hold the converts to their distinctive teaching 
or in permanent membership. To and fro the people 
went, and whether in the one communion or the other 
they held to the same local tenets and practices. More 



56 Round Robin 

and more frequently would small bodies get hold of a 
thought new to them and attractive, and on the basis 
of the novel suggestion would organize a new body in 
the old, or break away altogether. So came the 
Holy Rollers, the Sanctificationists, etc. 

As to our Church, they knew little of it. Some of 
the better informed knew of it as the entering wedge 
of the Roman Catholic Church; but the majority 
were as ignorant of its existence as the mountain 
farmer in Southwestern Virginia, of whom a prospecting 
clergyman asked, "My friend, are there any Episco- 
palians in these parts?" "Well, I don't know exactly," 
answered the farmer, "my son Jack killed some sort o' 
strange animal over on the hill last week and nailed 
the skin on the barn door. You might look at it." 

The formal theology of the mountain folk is as 
variegated as the flora of the mountains themselves. 
True to their Scotch descent their disputations are 
many and fierce. Immersion, close communion, original 
sin, and jree will are their favorite tilting grounds; 
and whatever the position taken it is fortified by 
Scripture taken word for word from the King James 
version. This version is regarded in practice as the 
original text of the Scripture, and, so, infallible — that 
is, infallible in the sense in which they receive it. 

To the Scriptures they go to settle every question of 
speculation; and the things they wrest from the 
Scriptures are indeed remarkable. One of them 
declared to the writer that St. Peter was a Negro; and 
on being asked for his proof triumphantly adduced 
Acts 13:1 wherein mention is made of "Simeon that 
was called Niger." Another quoted I Corinthians 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 57 

15:51 and 52, "We shall all be changed in a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye," as Christ's own declaration 
of the universal need of instantaneous and sensible 
conversion. They apply St. Paul's disciplinary rules 
as to dress and silence and subjection most rigorously 
to the women; and, like men every where and every 
when, they are fond of quoting a part of his dictum, 
"The husband is the head of the wife," without the 
illuminating addition of self-sacrifice, "even as Christ 
is of the Church." Their microscopic examination 
of some passages is amazing and their deductions are 
overwhelming: "You can't foretell nothing in this 
world certainly," said a hard-headed old man to a 
valley preacher who was arguing certain prophecies 
of his own. "Didn't Christ refuse to give them 
Pharisees a sign? Didn't he tell 'em 'Ye say when 
ye see the sky red at morning' and so on? I fergit 
the words, but he never even told 'em a red sunrise 
meant rain; he told 'em 'Ye say' thus and so. He 
knowed the weather does just as hit pleases." 

But while they claim and grant the widest liberty of 
speculation and dogma, and will concede whatever 
the dexterous use of proof- texts supports, there is a limit 
beyond which outraged humanity forbids speculation 
to go. In The Spirit of the Mountains, Miss Emma B. 
Miles tells this anecdote: "The shortest and hottest 
debate I ever witnessed was one that took place just 
outside the church door between a fledgling preacher 
and the oldest woman of the neighborhood. The 
young fellow had just delivered a sermon on the 
apostolic succession, declaring that no one could 
possibly be saved without baptism at the hands of a 
preacher of his own particular denomination: he had 



58 Round Robin 

even named his mother — with deep respect and regret, 
it is true, but still he mentioned her — as one he believed 
to be among the eternally lost on account of her 
failure to comply with this scriptural injunction. 
Outside the door, after meeting, an old woman faced 
him, trembling with indignation. "Lishy," she 
shrilled at him, unheeding the crowd, "Lishy Robbins, 
I held you in my arms before you was three hours old, 
and I cert'n'y never 'lowed to see you stand up in a 
church and preach as you've been a-preachin' this 
day. Lishy Robbins, me and yor mother was girls 
together; I knowed her all her life, and when she 
died nobody grieved for her any more than I did. 
There never was a better woman or a better Christian 
in any church, and if she hain't in heaven to-day — " 
The old voice broke; she gathered herself together, 
and went close to the lad. "Lishy Robbins, you 
ought to be slapped over for preachin' any such fool- 
ishness about your mother, andT'm a-gwine to do it." 
And forthwith she did. Her toil-hardened old fist 
shot out so unexpectedly that the young preacher 
went down like a cornstalk. Angry? Of course he 
was angry, but she was a grandmother of the mountains. 
There was nothing for it but to pick himself up with as 
much dignity as remained to him." 

II. The Normal Theology of the Mountains 
The realization of the unseen world is universal in 
the mountains. Arguments for the existence of God, 
or for our own existence after death, are entirely 
unnecessary. These are points that may be taken for 
granted in any discussion, and in any company. The 
most foul-mouthed and profane bully will declare his 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 59 

firm acceptance of them as facts. Acceptance of 
them is based, not on intuition, or on analogy, or on 
the dictum of the Church, but entirely on the witness 
borne to them in "the Good Book." 

But to deduce a large principle from a statement or 
from a group of acts never occurs to them in their 
literal acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God. 
Thus when they read that Jesus washed the disciples' 
feet and declared that he was among them as one that 
serveth, they find laid down in Christ's words, "I 
have left you an example that ye should wash one 
another's feet," not the law of service to men but the 
highest expression of the ritual law of religion; and the 
general effect of the passage is to enlarge the practice, 
not of mutual helpfulness, but of mutual foot-washing. 
But even so, is not such narrow respect for the authority 
of Christ and the Gospels better than a self-conceited 
rejection of his authority and theirs in every realm of 
life? It is a literalism like that with which the first 
disciples so often grieved Jesus; but even that was 
better than the self-sufficiency of the Pharisees or the 
blind arrogancy of the Greeks. With the reality of 
the unseen to rest in, all things are possible, and 
truth may be grafted on in place of superstitious 
reverence; and the religious sense that gave vitality 
and fruit to superstition will thenceforward flow 
through the engrafted truth and produce the true 
fruit of the Spirit. 

This sense of the unseen is so strong in them that 
the nearness of God — his immediate proximity, if 
we may intensify our expression — is the primary 
article of their working faith. They are not sufficiently 



60 Round Robin 

pantheistic or metaphysical to say, "In Him we Uve 
and move and have our being," but he is regarded 
rather as the patriarchs regarded him — a corporeal 
and invisible being standing at the elbow, or in the 
room, regarding, guiding, permitting or preventing 
events. His higher ethical import as revealed by 
Christ is in the background. He is the Jehovah of 
Israel, the God of Hosts, mighty rather than merciful, 
and dominating rather than forgiving. Samuel hewing 
Agag to pieces before the Lord, and Elijah slaying 
the prophets of Baal, stir their imagination and rouse 
their repressed enthusiasm more than Paul pleading 
before Agrippa or Stephen calling to his Lord, "Lay 
not this sin to their charge." 

In any personal disputes that arise the mighty 
Lord is with the right, and since each disputant knows 
that he himself is in the right, he knows that the 
Lord will help him; and he thereupon proceeds, not 
to rest in the Lord, but to act in the Lord. A feud 
leader, so Mr. John Fox tells, who had about exter- 
terminated the opposing faction and who had made 
a good fortune for a mountaineer while doing it (for 
he kept his men busy getting out timber when they 
were not fighting) said in all seriousness, "I have 
triumphed agin my enemies time and time agin. 
The Lord's on my side, and I gits a better and better 
Christian ever' year." The novelist tells of another 
incident: A preacher riding down a ravine came 
upon an old mountaineer .hiding in the bushes with 
his rifle. "What are you doing there, my friend?" 
he asked. "Ride on, stranger," was the easy answer. 
"I'm a-waitin' for Jim Johnson, and with the help of 
the Lord I'm goin' to blow his damn head off." 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 61 

As real as is the unseen, its manifestation in the 
mountain people is not primarily in conduct. To 
them the fruit of the spirit is not love, joy, peace, 
patience, and the like, but emotion, exaltation, frenzy; 
and if a man dies saying, "I'm not a-feared to die" 
his inner conviction carries to his hearers more satisfying 
conviction of his salvation than would a life-time of 
doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with 
his God. Morals are one thing and religion is another; 
and whoever tries to enforce connection between the 
two in another's life is deemed a very foolish or a very 
impertinent man. In not a few cases the preachers 
themselves have been dishonest or impure in their 
relations to others and have not lost either pulpit or 
prestige thereby. An old-timer admitted in court 
that he and a preacher had marked a false corner- 
tree which figured in an important land suit. All 
through the mountains surveys are made "from such 
and such a tree with such and such a mark on it so 
many degrees north and so many feet to a tree mar- 
ked so and so." Such trees are "corner- trees." On 
cross-examination the question was asked, "You admit 

that you and preacher X forged that corner-tree? 

Didn't you give preacher X a good character in 

your testimony? Do you consider it consistent 
with his profession as a minister of the Gospel to 
forge corner-trees?" "Aw," replied the witness, 
"religion ain't got nothin' to do with corner- trees." 
And yet, is that statement so widely different from 
many remarks made along the same line in highly 
cultured Christian communities? The difficulty in 
commending religion is the same among educated 
and ignorant. It is easy enough to get a theoretical 



62 Round Robin 

acceptance of an invisible order of creation higher 
than this. The stress comes in attempting to get the 
law of that permanent order practised in this world. 

The trouble with the mountain people is that their 
pulpit instruction seldom deals with this vital topic. 
"Sabbath breaking" may be assailed, or "cussin' ", 
or dancing, or card-playing; but lying, cheating, 
slandering, back-biting, murder, adultery, lewd con- 
versation and impure habits, are not touched on from 
the pulpit or in private exhortation from year's end 
to year's end by the preachers of the old school. It 
is no wonder, such being the case, that these matters 
do not come within the purview of religion. The 
wonder is, rather, that with so many discouragements 
and hostile conditions, and so much neglect of the 
teaching of the oracles of God, there should remain 
so much of native honor and integrity and uprightness 
received only by tradition from them of old time. 

The sense of the reality of the unseen and of the 
immediate presence of God leads to some rather 
startling conclusions. The inspiration of the Bible 
is regarded as an historic event which occurred once 
and for all time and gave to the Bible the supreme 
seat of authority in doctrine and dispute. But the 
inspiration of those who preach the Word is ever 
renewed, and is constantly manifesting itself. It is 
not an intermediate inspiration, it is immediate. 
The preacher throws himself on God, and yields him- 
self to the utterance of the Holy Ghost as the pipe to 
the breath of the player. That preacher is condemned 
who takes his text from the printed page of the Bible 
rather than from the spiritual guidance of the Holy 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders G3 

Ghost. He is regarded as showing thereby the refusal 
of God to use him as a mouthpiece. 

As a rule this suits the mountain ministers entirely. 
They have an exaltation in feeling that once more 
God is speaking to his people by the mouth of his holy 
prophets. "There ain't no Holy Ghost in book 
larnin'," they say. One of them was persuaded to go 
to a theological seminary. After a few months he 
returned; and to an inquirer said, "Yes, the seminary 
is a good place to go and get rested up, but 'tain't worth 
while fer me ter go thar no more 's long as I've got 
good wind." And since emotion is to be stirred and 
frenzy roused, and the preaching is in vain that cannot 
produce these results, "good wind" is the first 
essential of the mountain preacher. The sing-song of 
a fierce and strident voice continued for an hour or 
two hypnotizes the congregation. A large portion 
of the sermon may be only a string of Bible stories 
told in the homeliest language, and, as likely as not, 
having no connection with any central thought; but 
by and by the long continued exhortation and 
peroration will take on a tone like the following: 
"Oh, brethren, repent ye, and repent ye of your sins,ah. 
Fer if you don't, ah, the Lord, ah, he will grab yer by 
the seat of yer pants, ah, and hold yer over hell-fire 
till ye holler like a coon." 

It is not to be thought that all the preachers are 
ignorant, uncouth, or of violent temper. Many have 
some education, some are little short of cultured, and 
intelligent consecration is found in a considerable 
number, especially in those of the Methodist and 
Presbyterian churches. About ten years after gradu- 



64 Round Robin 

ation the writer met a classmate, a first honor man, 
and exchanged experiences with him. The young 
man gave this account of himself: He had taught 
school for some years and had saved several hundred 
dollars. While teaching he had read for the Methodist 
ministry. Having been accepted he had been sent 
to a circuit on Sand Mountain, the most desolate and 
lawless district in Northeast Alabama. His average 
salary from a half-dozen preaching stations totalled 
fifty dollars a year, with bed and lodging at each point 
and feed for his horse. After some years he had, at 
the tim.e of this meeting, expended all the money he 
had saved, and, not being able to live on his salary, 
and not having the eloquence and social grace that 
would lead the bishop to give him a better charge, 
had just been "located" at his own request by the 
Conference from which he was then returning, and was 
about to resume school teaching. "And then what, 
Johnnie?" I asked him. "As soon as I have saved up 
enough money to keep me going a few years more," 
he quietly answered, "I shall renew my connection 
with the Conference, and preach again till the money 
is gone." 

HI. Some Abnormal Developments of Religion 

Not so admirable are the characteristics of the 
preacher in those denominations that are indigenous 
to ignorance — the Hardshell Baptists, Holiness, Holy 
Rollers, Seventh Day Adventists, Three-Seed-in-the- 
Spirit, and the like — and the Mormons. These are 
the preachers that give ground for many picturesque 
but misleading sketches of mountain religion. They 
are distinctly in the minority; but just as a lawless 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 65 

minority can give a reputation to a section so a minority 
who exhibit any marked peculiarities give the entire 
section a reputation for possessing those peculiarities. 

The Mormons are not making the progress in the 
mountains that they once made. Twenty years ago 
at a Mormon conference held in Chattanooga, reports 
showed that the number of Mormon elders working in 
Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and 
Kentucky exceeded the number of clergymen of the 
Church in the same states. It is not so now. Many 
causes have operated to reduce their number, not the 
least being the wider diffusion of education, secular 
and religious. Their pernicious influence has, how- 
ever, left behind it scattered converts who practice 
polygamy. 

On the other hand the ''Holiness Church," or as it 
prefers to be known, "The Church of God," has grown 
rapidly. It claims as many as two thousand congre- 
gations in the entire South, the great majority being 
in the mountains. To these people the Bible, in the 
King James Version, is wholly inspired and its books 
are equally infallible, Canticles yielding precedence 
not by one whit to the Gospels. Justification, Regen- 
eration, Sanctification, and the possibility of living a 
sinless life, the gift of the Holy Ghost testified by 
miraculous manifestations, and the Gift of Tongues, 
by which the disciples bear witness to experiences that 
transcend the limits of expression of any known language, 
but that compel expression and expression in a heavenly 
tongue, are the teachings that are stressed. This 
Gift of Tongues is a possibility to every believer. 
When conferred it is the evidence of that complete 



66 Round Robin 

holiness by virtue of which they see God, and are 
beyond the power of sin and the possibiUty of sinning. 
This denomination holds to baptism by immersion, 
and to foot-washing. In ailments and accidents the 
consistent members ignore doctors and material reme- 
dies, trust in God without the mediation of the instru- 
mentalities of medicine, and call for the elders of this 
communion whose duty is to anoint the sick with oil 
and pray for them. It is claimed also that members 
who have received the testimony of the Spirit may 
with impunity take up poisonous serpents, and that, 
if bitten, they are immune from evil consequences. 
Is is held that demons literally incarnate themselves 
in human flesh and blood, and that it is the duty of the 
elders to exorcise them; devils, accordingly, are expelled 
from the possessed by the authority of God's Church 
through the power of the Holy Spirit. In their public 
worship it is no uncommon thing for a score or more of 
persons to be praying with a loud voice at the same 
time, while others are talking in the unknown tongue, 
and still others are singing and shouting at the top 
of their voices. 

The Seventh Day Adventists, though numerically 
inferior to the Holiness Church, are growing much 
more rapidly. This denomination has doubled its 
membership every ten years since it was organized in 
1845, and in 1915 claims 150,000 members. Like 
the Holiness followers. Seventh Day Adventists get 
their teachings from the Bible literally interpreted; 
but they get some different results. Medical missionary 
work is one of their chief aims, and they have built 
large sanitariums in different sections of the country. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 67 

Their name declares their distinctive doctrines. They 
hold that the Saturday or Seventh Day Sabbath is of 
divine and permanent obligation as the holy day of 
rest, and that the Second Coming of our Lord is near 
at hand, though none can foretell its exact time. They 
believe in "conditional immortality" of the soul: 
that is, eternal life is not the inherent characteristic 
of all human beings good or bad, "saved" or "lost," 
so that some will be eternally happy and some in ever- 
lasting pain, but is the gift of God through belief in 
Jesus Christ. The wicked shall be cast into hell, but 
the flame shall destroy them, and they shall cease to 
exist, not having attained to the life everlasting. Only 
the blessed shall live forever. They are strict vege- 
tarians, going back for their food law to God's command 
to our first parents, whom, rather than Noah, we 
should imitate. Believing in sound bodies as an aim 
and evidence of religious effort and attainment they 
refuse to use stimulants and condiments — whiskey 
and brandy, or pepper, mustard, and vinegar. They 
give not only a seventh of their time to God's specific 
service, but also a tenth of their income. Their 
churches have few financial difficulties, and their 
ministers have practically the same salaries every- 
where, paid from a central fund, and so being removed 
from either the temptation or the hope of "bettering 
their condition" by seeking a larger pastorate. 

These are only instances of the many departures 
from normal religious manifestation in the mountains. 
A composite photograph of mountain doctrine and 
usage, theological and ecclesiastical, is impossible. 
When "the Bible and the Bible only, the religion of 
Protestants" is interpreted to mean, as it is interpreted 



68 Round Robin 

in the mountains, the Bible as interpreted by any 
self-constituted interpreter according to his own 
private fancy, ecstatic vision, or supposed revelation, 
the result is, inevitably, theological chaos. It is 
beyond our power to conceive of any vagary that has 
not been preached and, by at least a limited nimiber, 
received in the mountains. Nor is this to be wondered 
at in view of the wide vogue of Dowie and Mary 
Baker Eddy in sections where reason, and culture, 
and refinement would presimiably have rendered 
such aberrations impossible. 

A further catalogue of peculiarities in religious 
manifestation would be amusing, and interesting, 
and pathetic ; but not especially profitable. 

IV. The Earnestness of the Highlander's 
Religion 

Among the men of the mountain who have "pro- 
fessed religion," and who have "come through," and 
who are able to "give their experience," religion is 
the chief topic of conversation. Some dogmatize, 
some quibble, some talk about it but many more 
speak quietly and simply of its blessings in their own 
life and heart. 

There is a real and very profound seriousness of 
purpose in these people, as in all people, when they are 
in earnest in their religion. Here are two or three 
instances: 

In the "Dark Corner" of South Carolina, a section 
notorious for lawlessness of every description, a young 
man, now in the Baptist ministry and working in 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 69 

that his native neighborhood, was much impressed 
by the death of two of his sisters in eight days. "About 
three years after their deaths," he writes, ''I was 
riding along the road and became awful convicted of 
sin. I could hear those prayers as plain that day as 
when they were uttered. I did not tell any one about 
my trouble. I just worried all to myself. I tried to 
pray but it was hard. One day I thought I would go 
off and pray aloud, and I went up into the stable loft 
and tried to speak aloud and see how it sounded for a 
bad boy to pray, but the devil said to me, 'You fool, 
you, somebody will hear you; you had better get 
down from here.' I took him at his word and got 
down. Then I went into the yard and sat on a stump 
and prayed silently but got no relief. I had had some 
feelings that I ought to be a Christian when I was 
eleven years old but some older boys made light of 
religion and caused me to abandon the idea. I came 
very near being lost. If I had had the proper encour- 
agement I would have become a Christian long before 
I did." Finally he was impressec with the sincerity 
of a preacher who came over once a month a distance 
of thirteen mountain miles and who received the 
munificent salary of seven dollars. "I gave him my 
hand and asked him to pray for me, but this meeting 
ran its course and I was not saved. During the next 
spring they organized a Sunday school and elected 
me secretary and teacher of a class of young ladies. 
This was a hard job for a sinner, but they said it was 
the best they could do. Well, I knew I was not fit 
and they knew it. I was sorry I was not fit yet I 
wanted religion but would not make up my mind to 
surrender. I was trying to get it all by myself." 



70 Round Robin 

A year passed, and then a new meeting was held, 
at which, he writes, "I determined to get reUgion if 
there was any for me." He conferred with a cousin 
who had recently been converted and whose conversion 
so impressed him, that, in his own words, "I decided 
to put my whole trust in the Lord, and when I did 
that, I felt in my soul that I was saved. I cannot tell 
with language how I rejoiced. Human tongue was 
not made to handle such experiences. I joined the 
church and continued to rejoice every step I made." 

An old man who used to attend Archdeacon Neve's 
church in the Ragged Mountains of Virginia one day 
told the Archdeacon that he wished to "jine" the 
church, and the clergyman went up to his cabin to 
see him and talk over the matter. Neve gives this 
account of the interview: "He said there was one 
thing he thought might be inconsistent with his mem- 
bership in the Church, and he wanted to ask me about 
it. I asked him what it was, and he went over to 
his bed and pulled out from under it a box, out of 
which he took an old fiddle. He was willing to give it 
up if I said so. I asked him to play me a tune and he 
did so, and I recognized the familiar strains of "Jesus, 
Lover of my soul." He was much relieved when I 
told him that he could play his fiddle and be a Christian 
at the same time. It was about his only means of 
recreation, but he was willing to make the sacrifice 
in order to be a Christian." 

On one occasion, also, Mr. Neve tells us, a woman 
walked a whole day to get to preaching and was making 
the return trip on foot the next day when he overtook 
her and carried her home. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 71 

It is no wonder, distances being great and preaching 
infrequent, and other interests few, that a twenty- 
minute sermon does not satisfy the mountain people. 
"I remember an interesting service," writes Mr. Neve, 
"which I held in the early days of the work at Simmons' 
Gap. The room which we used for our school at 
the time was crowded, men standing around the walls. 
I preached a long sermon and then closed with a 
prayer and the Benediction. The people, however, 
showed no signs of moving to go, so I got up and gave 
them another address. But even then their hunger 
for preaching seemed to remain unsatisfied, so I arose 
once more and delivered a third address; and then 
one old woman got up and moved toward the door, and 
the rest followed." 

The ordinary service of worship is simple and in- 
formal. Whenever it is thought a sufficient number 
of persons have assembled, the preacher and the spir- 
itual dignitaries who sit in the "Amen Corner" beside 
the pulpit raise a hymn, whose function is to out- 
siders what the orchestral prelude is to belated theatre- 
goers. Only after these worthies have sung the first 
verse do others join in. A few more hymns are lined 
out by the preacher and joined in by all. A chapter 
from the Bible is read, with comments and explanations 
freely interjected, and then the congregation is bidden 
to prayer. After several hymns more, and perhaps a 
prayer by one of the brethren, the preacher launches 
forth upon a sermon lasting never less than an hour, 
sometimes as much as two hours, warming up towards 
the end and exhorting to immediate surrender to God. 
Frequently a number of conversions are the result, 
and the converted give their hands to the preacher; 



72 Round Robin 

after which the congregation in general "extend the 
right hand of fellowship" to the neophytes. The 
service concludes with a short and simple prayer. 

If the preacher is encouraged by the results at a 
given service to start a revival, preaching services, 
experience meetings, and the like proceed for several 
days continuously, the only difference from the stated 
public worship being in duration and intensity. The 
duration of a revival is determined by the amount of 
interest shown; and the amount of interest is measured 
by the amount of shouting, conversions, requests for 
prayers and the like. 

It is difficult to convey to those who have never 
sympathetically witnessed a revival a due impression 
of the reality of it to these people. Since few that 
read this book have ever seen anything of the kind 
the best idea may be given by likening it to the "good 
time" which they may recall on some occasion when 
they dropped all constraint, and every convention, 
and without reserve surrendered themselves to the 
enjoyment and satisfaction of the day. The revival, 
or "big meeting," or "protracted meeting," is the 
"good time" of the Highlander, and he gives himself 
to it wholly. Silence, and quiet, and repression have 
characterized his life for weeks and months, and now 
when deep calls to deep, the human responds to the 
divine, and the response is made with absolutely 
unconscious freedom of expression. There is no more 
restraint of self from expressing "joy in the Holy 
Ghost" in Unicoi County, Tennessee, than there is 
restraint of self from expressing pleasure in an orgy 
of the flesh just off Broadway, New York. The 
tendency of education, culture, and enlightenment is 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 73 

to repress this self-expression, whether for bad or for 
good, and the repression will come quickly enough in 
the mountains. In the mean time, it is the voice of 
God's children calling to their Father. Much of 
their calling is very childish; but even childishness 
is better than undue sophistication. And we may 
be very sure that when these children become men 
they will no longer think, speak and understand as 
children, but putting away childish things will think, 
and speak, and understand as men. 



CHAPTER IV. 
IV. The Work of the Church in the Mountains 

In a handbook of mountain missions, entitled 
"The Highlanders of the South," published in 1910 "in 
the interests of the work of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church" is a chapter dealing with "The work of other 
denominations." A summary is given of what has 
been done by the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the 
United Brethren, the Christians, and the Roman 
Catholics. But our Church does not appear to have 
undertaken or accomplished anything. "The United 
Brethren Church," the author writes, "has but one 
school in the South, and that a very small one, the 
property being worth about .Ti.18,000, the enrollment 
about 125, and the grade hardly more than academic." 
The natural inference would be that the work of the 
Church, since it is not even mentioned, is even more 
insignificant. 

It is safe to say that this reflects the popular opinion. 
On the assumption that "the Episcopal Church is not 
suited to the common people," and on the further 
assumption that the mountain people are the most 
difficult type of common people, the achievements of 
the Church in the mountains are deemed negligible 
and its efforts futile. Like most assumptions these 
are overthrown by knowledge of the facts. The Church 
has made great advance in the mountains, and her 
work is prospering all along the line. To-day all 
mountain workers that have informed themselves of 
what she is doing, and divested themselves of sectarian 
prejudice admire the courage, the tenacity, the adapta- 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 75 

bility of the Church, and the broad view she takes of 
the responsibiUties she has assumed in joining in the 
work of uphft and development; and in some cases 
they are giving the sincere comphment of imitating 
the Church's varied undertakings. 

I, The Wider Scope of the Work. 

These undertakings have registered the slowly 
changing conceptions of the Church as to the nature 
and scope of her duty in preaching the Gospel. 

In the early days this preaching was purely evan- 
gelical. Preaching was by the spoken word from the 
pulpit. It was intended to produce certain sub- 
jective frames of mind and heart that fitted a person 
so to die that he might live happily in the world to 
come. This was and remains essential to any preach- 
ing that permanently affects the individual, and it 
has not been superseded by what was seen later to be 
necessary attendants on thorough preaching of the 
Gospel. 

About the middle of the nineteenth century, as a 
result of the Tractarian Movement, preaching became 
largely sacramental. Not only were submission to 
Baptism and reception of Holy Communion set forth 
as ordinances of Christ, essential to consistency in 
any who called him Lord; they were channels of 
divine grace, through which life and strength were 
received by those who believed, enabling them to 
attain life everlasting. This preaching was definite, 
concrete, and logical, and it appealed to many of the 
Highlanders; but it stressed Church authority and 
cut straight across the highly prized individualism 



76 Round Robin 

of the people, and so narrowed the terms of salvation 
in the world to come in addition to setting up barriers 
of Church exclusion of their own kinsmen in this 
world, that its appeal generally fell on deaf ears. 

The third stage of preaching the Gospel was the 
sociological. This began to make itself felt about 
twenty years ago. Not only one's self but one's 
neighbor was one's responsibility. Not only the 
neighbor's salvation in the world to come but his 
salvation in this world was the will of Christ. Salvation 
was not of isolated numbers hereafter but of correlated 
members in one body now. And present salvation 
had to do not merely with spiritual relation to God 
and moral relation to men, but with intelligent relation 
to life, and with physical health in the body, on whose 
soundness the perfect fulfillment of all other relations 
depends. 

So the Church started her work with preachers 
merely. Priests came in to give efficacy to preaching. 
Social workers were inevitable to manifest the fulness 
of Christ's presence as Redeemer. And at the present 
stage the Church expresses her care for the whole 
nature of God's children by maintaining churches, 
schools and hospitals for the soul, the mind and the 
body. 

This three- fold conception of her duty was not set 
forth by any central authority. There is not any 
such authority in the Church's mountain work. The 
Highlander is much the same in Kentucky that he is 
in East Tennessee or in western Carolina, but the 
determination of what work shall be done in any 
section is made locally; and almost universally this 
means, in practice, by the Bishops. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 77 

The dioceses in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Virginia, North Carolina, South CaroHna, Georgia, 
and Alabama received missionary aid from the General 
Board of Missions, but the General Board had no author- 
ity in determining the policy to be pursued in expend- 
ing the money, except that which comes from making, 
withholding, increasing, or diminishing appropriations 
of money for the work locally undertaken. 

About twenty five years ago the Diocese began to 
pay closer attention to organized work in the mountain 
districts. 

In 1892 the Diocese of Virginia was divided, and the 
Diocese of Southern Virginia so erected that at a later 
date the western end with its mountain work might 
be set off as a separate diocese; this has not yet been 
done, but the Diocese has attended to this work 
through a Coadjutor Bishop. In 1895 the Diocese of 
Kentucky was divided, and the eastern part erected 
into the Diocese of Lexington. In the same year the 
Diocese of North Carolina ceded the western section 
to the General Convention, which formed it into the 
Missionary District of Asheville, though a Bishop was 
not elected until 1898. In 1907, upon the division 
of the Diocese of Georgia, the Diocese of Atlanta was 
organized out of the northern half. The erection of a 
diocese in upper South Carolina and in East Tennessee, 
having the Highland work especially in view, has been 
pending for years, but has been postponed in each case 
purely for financial reasons. 

In all these changes of administration, however, 
there has been, despite the lack of a central authority, 
a remarkable similarity of development in ideals and 



78 Round Robin 

methods. This is due to the fact that the Bishops and 
the workers realize the largeness of the problems, are 
not riding hobbies, and have no prejudices for or 
against any promising or feasible plan, but confer 
with open mind, glad to profit by the successes or 
failures of others. Thus it has come to pass that, 
as the mountain people themselves are one, the Church's 
work among them is one. For this reason what is 
said of the work in one section is so largely true of the 
work in most other sections that to describe in order 
the missionary activities, beginning in West Virginia 
and closing in Alabama, would, though interesting in 
the first few cases, soon become so monotonous, such 
a repetition of the same notes, that it would be as 
profitless as to describe to the tourist the trees of the 
southern mountains singly or the high-stooped houses 
of New York's cross-streets one by one. We must 
content ourselves with a study of types and charac- 
teristics, specific fields being adduced only to illustrate, 
to show tendencies or to give encouragement. 

At the outset of a study of the Church's missionary 
work a reminder must be repeated that in another 
form was given in an earlier chapter: To generalize 
is neither to universalize nor to exclude, and to say 
that a given custom or teaching characterizes a certain 
section is not to say that a majority favor or practice it ; 
but only to say that it assumes greater relative impor- 
tance there than it has elsewhere. For example: 
Evangelical preaching is peculiarly characteristic of 
our mission work in the Virginia dioceses and Lexington, 
sacramental in Tennessee, and sociological in Asheville, 
yet sacramental preaching is much stressed in Asheville, 
sociological is much in evidence in Tennessee, and in 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 79 

Lexington and the Virginias settlement houses, 
schools, and hospitals are numerous. The differences 
in the mountain work are not so much in the kind of 
work done, as, if the figure is allowable, in the pro- 
portion in which the ingredients of the work are mixed. 
If we think of this unity in diversity our interest will 
be greater and our helpfulness more extensive, when, 
going behind "differences of Churchmanship," we 
come to "oneness in Christ" and find all the workers 
working with desire to fulfill what is Christ's purpose 
for the Highlander, as well as for those who know him 
not — "that they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly." 

II. A Brief Survey of the Occupied Field 

A brief survey of the Church's work by dioceses will 
be a kind of "stock taking" and will also serve to 
indicate more clearly the unity of spirit of which we 
have been speaking: {For detailed list of works see Ap- 
pendix A, Page — ) 

WEST VIRGINIA. In the Diocese of West Vir- 
ginia, which lies entirely in the Appalachian system 
the general missionary work is carried on by twenty 
missionaries who minister in twenty-two churches and 
chapels and in many preaching places where conditions 
have not yet permitted the erection of a church building. 
These missions embrace 2,000 of the 6,000 communi- 
cants in the diocese. They are supported at an 
annual expense of SI 8, 000, of which those who are 
helped give one-half and the other 4,000 communicants 
the other half. In addition to this, an extensive 
medical and educational work is conducted. Two 



80 Round Robin 

liospitals — The Sheltering Arms at Hansford and the 
Reynolds Memorial at Moundsville — cared for 2,275 
indoor patients in the year 1914. These hospitals are 
of especial benefit to the miners who are the bulk of 
the rural population, and it is worthy of note, as 
showing the extent of this hospital work and the 
confidence it inspires, that the miners themselves 
contributed $21,000 to its support in 1913, and in 
1914 the still larger sum of $24,000. In connection 
with the hospitals are training schools for nurses, 
from which responsible trained nurses are graduated 
every year. An industrial school at Blue Ridge 
Mountains, a day school at Ansted on the Allegheny 
Mountains, and the Settlement House Work of the 
Sarah Upham Sprague Memorial House, are among the 
leading activities of the mission field. Several hundred 
children are in the schools. The value of all the 
property used in this field is about $250,000 and to 
carry on the work costs annually about $40,000. 
The General Board of Missions is not asked to support 
any part of this work. 

VIRGINIA. In the Diocese of Virginia where the 
work has been wonderfully well organized there are 
thirty-eight missions — seven in the Ragged Mountains, 
thirteen in the Blue Ridge, eleven in the West Blue 
Ridge, and seven scattering. There are parochial 
schools in about half the missions, an industrial school 
at Dyke, mission homes and settlement houses of 
modest proportions in each of the four districts into 
which the field is divided, and a cottage hospital at 
Swift's Run Gap. Over forty missionaries, clergymen, 
deaconesses, teachers, nurses, and other workers are 
engaged in these multiform activities. More than 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 81 

one thousand dollars a month is required to carry the 
fixed charges, besides the ever recurring expanses for 
repairs, rebuilding, and new building. A most recent 
and beneficial development has been the establishment 
of a cannery at the industrial school. At Mission 
Home and Blackwell Hollow are clothing bureaus, 
where for two hours every Wednesday the people come 
to buy clothing. The sources of supply are the boxes 
and barrels of clothing sent for this purpose by parish 
and missionary organizations all over the country. 
Articles are sold at a mere fraction of their cost, to 
avoid the pauperization that would come with con- 
tinued giving. A very small dispensary is conducted 
in connection with this work. The General Board 
of Missions is not asked to support any part of this 
work. 

SOUTHERN VIRGINIA. In the Diocese of South- 
ern Virginia, in which the General Board supports 
eleven women workers in the mountains, no large 
institutional work has been attempted except that in 
Allegheny County, where a four hundred acre farm 
has been bought and an industrial school established with 
forty boys in hand and two hundred on the waiting list. 
In Franklin County, where the attempt is being made 
to establish a chain of missions, the work is confined 
for the present to Church services and general edu- 
cation. Three schools are in operation, that at St. 
Peter's-in-the-Mountain, Callaway, having 132 pupils; 
at St. Elizabeth's, Hunter Hall, 38; and at St. John's- 
in-the-Mountains, Endicott, 32; or in all 202 pupils 
in one county. The purpose is to reach out with the 
same kind of work into the four adjacent counties, 
which, though large and populous, do not contain all 
told a dozen communicants of the Church. 



82 Round Robin 

LEXINGTON. In the Diocese of Lexington the 
mountain district comprises more than one-half the 
total area of the diocese and is larger than either New 
Hampshire or Vermont. Great railroad and coal- 
mining developments in recent years have created 
great opportunities and responsibilities in this diocese. 
Added to the work among the native mountain people 
is the necessity for work among the incoming miners; 
and the social condition may be estimated from the fact 
that of fifty men at one time in a certain county jail 
thirty were indicted for murder. St. John's Home 
Training School at Corbin is the center of operations. 
Here the girls are gathered from the mountains and 
kept away from demoralizing home influences long 
enough to form habits that will enable them to lead 
rather than succumb when they return home. The 
theory and practice of domestic science is taught in all 
its branches — cleanliness and neatness in dress, sim- 
plicity and order in the bed-room, and a knowledge 
of cooking-values as well as of food-values — in addition 
to the 'Three R's". In Letcher County, close against 
West Virginia and Virginia, several mission churches 
have been built with the active assistance of a coal 
company, which recognizes the economic value of a 
Church that stresses right conduct as evidence of true 
religion. At Middlesboro is an industrial school with 
eight teachers and one hundred and fifty pupils. Of 
the forty- four mission stations in the diocese the 
great majority are in the mountains, and for the support 
of this work the General Board of Missions contributes 
$4,500, of which $3,000 is conditioned on the raising 
of an equal sum by the Bishop from outside sources. 

TENNESSEE. In the Diocese of Tennessee the 
entire mountain-mission work is done from two centres 



The Southern HIGHLA^4DS and Highlanders 83 

in the Cumberland Plateau, which divides East Ten- 
nessee from Middle. No work has been undertaken 
in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Unakas, the 
Chilhowees, and the Clinch, which comprize the bulk 
of the Tennessee mountains. 

The two centres are Sewanee and Monterey. About 
three miles from Sewanee the sisters of St. Mary have 
established a home school for girls, of whom from thirty 
to forty are generally enrolled; and at the same dis- 
tance in another direction St. Andrew's School for boys 
is conducted by the Order of the Holy Cross, with an 
attendance of eighty. The buildings are most attractive 
and the industrial training given in each case thorough 
and effective. In the coves embraced by spurs of 
the plateau are a number of chapels and preaching 
places with more or less euphonious names — Jump Off, 
Thumping Dick, Roark's Cove, being some of them — 
which, while in the general charge of experienced 
clergymen, are, in fact, so many experimental labora- 
tories for the theological students in the University 
of the South. 

The work at Monterey on the summit of the 
plateau, and half way between Nashville and 
Knoxville, is so new as to be yet in the experimental 
stage; but so far its success has been great. An 
unused summer hotel accomodating sixty persons 
and carrying with it one hundred acres of land has 
been bought. Within a radius of fifty miles is a 
white population of 68,000, of whom twenty per cent, 
are illiterate or semi-illiterate. Pellagra, hookworm, 
tuberculosis, catarrh, and many other preventable, 
curable, or ameliorable diseases prevail. Within the 
twenty contiguous counties the Church has never 



84 Round Robin 

before attempted work of any sort. In addition to 
worship, and public and private religious instruction, 
the three months' session of the public school is sup- 
plemented by an additional term, and daily instruction 
is given in domestic science of the most practical 
sort; an infirmary has been opened, and a visiting 
nurse gives medical advice and personal attention; a 
properly supervised camp for tuberculosis patients 
has been set up a mile away; and a preparatory school 
for theological students has been opened. Seven 
young men are now at work under a graduate of 
Harvard University, reducing expenses and gaining 
experience by doing all the manual labor necessary 
to the upkeep of the school, and going out to mission 
points to conduct services every Sunday. The General 
Board of Missions supplies the salary of the House 
Director, who is assisted by a trained nurse and a 
teacher of domestic science, but the student- workers do 
not receive salaries. Stated public worship is carried 
on in twenty-five places, and advantage is taken of 
every unoccupied store-house or dwelling for school, 
worship, clothing depot, or some other purpose that 
the conditions demand and resourcefulness perceives. 

In East Tennesse a vigorous campaign for money 
and men with which to develop the local field was 
recently begun. It is too soon to expect results, but 
if the plans are carried through the results will be far 
reaching. 

ASHEVILLE. In the Missionary District of Ashe- 
ville the educational and industrial work has developed 
beyond that of any other diocese in the mountains. 
This is what we should expect when we recall that the 
district was accepted as a charge of the general Church 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 85 

for the specific purpose of doing work among the 
uncuhured mountain people. Cultured, refined, and 
enlightened communities — Asheville, Waynesville, 
Hendersonville, Tryon, Morganton, Lincolnton, and 
Rutherfordton, not to mention others — did not call 
for this special attention; but back in the Mountains, 
from three to thirty miles away, were large numbers to 
whom this culture, refinement, and enlightenment did 
not percolate. It was for these that the district was 
constituted and the work prosecuted, and to these 
people twenty-seven of the thirty clergy of the dis- 
trict give all or nearly all of their time. Of the thirteen 
organized parishes and sixty-eight mission stations 
only three are self-supporting. There are twenty- 
three schools for white children; in them 60 teachers 
instruct 1,160 children. Negro schools to the number 
of four, with eight teachers, care for 213 children. 
The industrial teaching is done chiefly in four schools: 
(1) The Valle Crucis Industrial School carries its 
academic work through seven grades, and besides 
cooking, laundrying and sewing teaches the girls 
canning, basketry, poultry raising, dairy work, and 
apple packing. An eight months' school term is 
provided, and all pupils, both day and boarding, 
work out a part of the expenses. (2) Christ School, 
Arden, receives both boys and girls. The boys learn 
wood-carving, joiners' work, carpentry, and scientific 
farming, and are especially adept in making chairs 
and tables whose sale helps both the maker and the 
school financially. Spinning and weaving have been 
added recently. (3) The Patterson School, Legerwood, 
is entirely for boys, and provides grammar school 
education and instruction in modern agriculture. The 



86 Round Robin 

tract of land consists of 1,300 acres, of which about 
300 acres of "bottom land" is cleared and under tillage. 
The property was given outright, the school has no 
endowment, and is dependent on voluntary contri- 
butions and the manual labor of its pupils for support. 
It is the only secondary school in the United States 
where a boy absolutely penniless can actually pay his 
own way completely. (4) The Appalachian Industrial 
School, Penland, is the newest venture in educational 
development of the work, having existed in its indus- 
trial features only one year, and prior to that having 
been conducted three years in temporary quarters as 
a day school. The school is for both boys and girls, 
and the curriculum is practically that of the other 
schools. The farm comprises 140 acres. It is intended 
to extend the privileges of the school to adults, to admit 
mothers to sewing and cooking classes and fathers to 
instruction in agriculture, dairying and forestry. 
The total enrollment of pupils in these four schools 
is at present 284, but the demand for space exceeds 
the equipment. When that is completely furnished 
the four schools will have an enrollment of one thousand. 
The work in all of them is being put on a permanent 
and substantial basis. Specially designated gifts have 
permitted the erection of well built stone schoolhouses 
and dormitories. Some of the schools have dammed 
the streams and installed motors for light and power. 
The property valuation of all the schools, primary, 
academic, and industrial, is $125,000 and the annual 
cost of maintaining them is $30,000. 

A work entirely different is "The House of Child- 
hood" at Shull's Mills, a little cottage in which ten 
children from five years of age to thirteen have their first 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 87 

taste of what "homelife" really is when under Christian 
and refined influences. The simplicity and economy 
that are necessarily practiced, and the helpfulness that 
all are expected to give, may be inferred from the fact 
that the little five year old boy feeds the pigs and 
chickens. Under Church auspices but not under the 
ecclesiastical management a hospital is doing excellent 
work at Morganton. 

SOUTH CAROLINA, ATLANTA, ALABAMA 

In the remaining dioceses of the Appalachian Dis- 
trict not much work of a distinctive character has 
been done. 

In South Carolina the problem of the mill village, 
of dealing with MacGregor after he leaves his native 
heath, is so urgent that its importance has eclipsed 
that of the country still higher up. 

In North Georgia, the Diocese of Atlanta, a like 
condition prevails, complicated by the rapid growth of 
the manufacturing sections of the larger cities and 
by the actual decrease in population of towns and vill- 
ages, all of which calls for continual readjustment of 
forces and finances and leads the Bishop to begin new 
work only where it is forced on him. 

In Alabama the industrial development in the Bir- 
mingham district has led to the establishment of 
missions and preaching stations in about twenty 
places, but no industrial or educational features have 
been adopted. 

This survey discloses three facts: (1) That the 
Church's active work among the mountain people is 
in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and 



88 Round Robin 

North Carolina: (2) That there is a real unity in the 
work, and yet that the workers are not afraid to make 
an experiment to meet a novel condition; and (3) 
That our work in the mountains has already reached 
considerable proportions, and that the workers are 
planning for large development. 

III. Typical Evidences of Fruitful Work 

Has the work been fruitless? Is it only a splendid 
illustration of Christian chivalry, creditable to the 
heart but reflecting no glory on the intelligence? Has 
the Church been like the surf beating on a rock-bound 
coast, expending its energy, constantly recruiting its 
force from inexhaustible stores, and after long continued 
attacks finding the barriers as immobile as in the 
beginning? In other words, has such measure of 
success attended our missionary efforts that we are 
justified in continuing and increasing them? "By 
their fruits ye shall know them." What evidence 
does the mountain work present that it may claim our 
further endorsement and greater assistance? Cer- 
tainly these are fair questions. 

One may advocate a cause and by his enthusiasm 
alone secure our co-operation, but after a time the 
enthusiasm must produce results or our interest will 
wane. 

When we say that the missionary work is not afraid 
to accept the challenge of these questions we do not 
mean to imply that the workers are infallible or that 
the work or the methods are perfect. The workers 
in the mission field have the grace of God for their 
work, but grace is not infallibility, and missionaries 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 89 

are as subject to errors of judgment as are rectors of 
parishes or the traveUing representatives of wholesale 
stores. When a plan of campaign is laid out in a 
diocese or in a section of a diocese it is possible that 
it is a strategic blunder, but it is also possible that it is 
conceived in large wisdom. Indeed, the weight of 
probability favors the strategist more than the on- 
looker. Probably he knows more about the conditions 
than his critics know. But until the plan is worked 
out its wisdom cannot be demonstrated, and unwisdom 
can only be charged. Even if trial demonstrates the 
inability of the missionary to cope with conditions, 
that is all that it demonstrates. 

This should be emphasized. Occasional failures, 
blunders, mistakes, and errors, however costly they may 
be, do not affect the value of the work at large unless they 
are so general as plainly to be inseparable from the sys- 
tem of administration. The head of a firm that sends 
out travelling salesmen makes the distinction clear and 
sharp. He does not withdraw from business because of 
the inefifieciency of a given salesman. He does not take 
the salesman off the road because of an occasional failure 
to do the business in a business like way. He learns from 
the mistake, corrects the salesman and his error, redoubles 
his efforts, and increases his business. So the occasional 
shortcomings of missionaries and failures of their 
attempts should be regarded and treated by Churchmen 
in like manner, and not be followed by our criticism 
and by the withdrawal of our interest. It would not 
be honest to deny the presence of such conditions, but 
it would not be fair to say that they are widespread. 
They are not the rule; they are the exceptions. 



90 Round Robin 

The development of the District of Asheville is the 
largest and most striking illustration that can be 
given, buttressed as it is by statistics that are accessible 
to anyone. The district was organized in 1895. 
Taking the annual report made the following summer 
(1896) we find that the communicants numbered 
1,499; in 1914 they had increased to 3,223, an increase 
of more than one hundred per cent., even after large 
allowance is made for the growth of the self-supporting 
parishes. The congregations of the district then 
gave $13,310 to local support; in 1914 they gave 
$29,327; again an increase of one hundred per cent, 
after the same allowance is made for the self-supporting 
parishes. They then gave $451 for missionary work 
through the General Board; in 1914 they gave $2,188, 
with the same allowance; an increase of four hundred 
per cent. The value of all Church property was 
$127,435; in 1914 it was $509,225; an increase of 
four hundred per cent. These are items that can be 
measured. But besides the preaching that has been 
done, whose value cannot be figured, it is inconceivable 
that the education of so many thousands of mountain 
children should have been without large returns. 

The change in the general tone of a community is 
something that can be realized even when it cannot 
be tabulated. In the West Blue Ridge Mountain 
Missions in the Diocese of Virginia there are marked 
evidences of moral uplift, of community spirit, larger 
vision, and unselfish helpfulness in a general work that 
are ordinarily lacking. In every good work of the 
Church the people show appreciation by lending 
a hand, without salary, wages, or reward. At Rocky 
Bar, for example, where a stone church was recently 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 91 

completed, everybody helped, even the school children 
doing their part by collecting rock for the walls. "The 
fifty persons awaiting Confirmation," writes Mr. 
Ellis, the missionary, "the forty children at one point 
alone who can say the Catechism perfectly, the ability 
to hold the children in school till the 15th of May, 
thus giving them eight months in school when here- 
tofore it was with difficulty that they stayed the five 
months required in the public school — these are some 
of the evidences of improvement and proof that the 
people are behind the work. In material things we 
have the property, worth about $8,000, all paid for 
at St. Stephen's Mission; and at every point the build- 
ings are being kept up by the people without outside 
aid." 

In Archdeacon Neve's field in Virginia, in Greene 
County, a little distance from the top of the Blue 
Ridge, the inhabitants had been so long forgotten by 
all Christian people that the following was an actual 
occurrence. One of the mission teachers some miles 
away met a man from the Lost Mountain and asked, 
"Does anyone ever come up to see you about religious 
matters?" and the answer was, "Well, we did have a 
Mormon come up to see us last summer." There was 
neither school nor church on the mountain, and the 
people were practically destitute not only of all religious 
privileges but even of any chance of educating their 
children, who were growing up absolutely uneducated 
heathen. Yet some years later in the same neigh- 
borhood at Simmons' Gap, where a school had been 
opened, a small girl was much distressed at the illness 
of the young lady who taught the school. "Oh, dear." 
she exclaimed, "'sposen she was to die. What should 



92 Round Robin 

we do? There wouldn't be nobody to tell us things." 
The best evidence of influence, however, was given 
by a boy who had not been misbehaving in any way 
but was evidently disturbed by the disorder: "Miss 
Fitzhugh," he said to the teacher, "if it would help 
you any to manage the children, you can give me a 
beating if you like." 

Some of the children in these same mountains have 
become missionaries in their own homes. Here is an 
instance: An eight year old pupil was anxious to be 
confirmed, but was told that being so young she must 
wait a while. When she found that she herself could 
not be confirmed, she went to work and persuaded an 
older cousin to be confirmed. As soon as she was old 
enough she was herself accepted as a candidate and 
received the Laying-on-of-Hands. She has since been 
doing the work of Christ in the family. She brought 
her brothers and sisters to baptism, and when another 
baby came she brought it to church, carried it to the 
font, and stood sponser for it. She has since been 
trying to persuade her mother to join the Church. 
At present she and the cousin whom she brought to 
confirmation spend part of every Saturday in cleaning 
the church and getting it ready for Sunday service. 

At Simmons' Gap, Archdeacon Neve's earliest mission 
in the Blue Ridge, the work has established itself in 
the new generation and shown results that are per- 
manent. In the beginning the children were like little 
wild animals. Home influence for good did not exist. 
Moral restraint there was none. Not only the children 
were whipped, but they and the women also were 
beaten severely by the men, not for their lapses or for 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 93 

discipline, but because of sheer temper or drunken 
irritation and brutality. Plays and pastimes with 
definite purpose were not known. All this is past. 
For some years a succession of teachers, boarding in the 
cabin of one of the mountain families, taught the 
children in a small frame schoolhouse. What these 
teacher-martyrs endured few can imagine, none can 
realize, unless they have been similarly placed. But 
a few years ago a school and a pretty little church of 
concrete blocks were built, and early in 1915 a mission 
house was built near by as a residence for the teacher 
and another worker. Every spring at the close of 
the school session a combined celebration of the four 
schools in the district is held near by at St. Hilda's 
School. The progress that has been made of late 
years by these children, evidenced on this occasion by 
their little plays, drills, and other exercises, is really 
wonderful. 

Not merely are the hospitals in the various dioceses 
saving the lives and ameliorating the sufferings of 
many mountain people; even more are helped by the 
advice and help of the missionary nurses, who visit 
in the homes and minister to those who are remote 
from the hospital. Their visits save many lives, 
notably the lives of little children whom their parents 
either entrust blindly to the keeping of the Lord, or 
neglect outright, not using the help even of witchcraft. 
Here is one instance of many told in the words of the 
nurse herself: "A mother had a very sick baby about 
two months old. A neighbor came and told us the 
baby was sick, and that the mother was "just naturally 
compelled and obliged" to go to the corn field to work. 
When we went to the home we found the baby had 



94 Round Robin 

not been washed or dressed for two days, the baby's 
bottle had leaked over everything, and the child 
itself was threatened with pneumonia. Baby's little 
sister, with whom she had been left, when asked what 
she was giving the little sufferer, replied, 'Barley water.' 
We found that this consisted of flour and water boiled 
together, and a teaspoonful of Castoria added. The 
mother had already lost eight babies. If this little one 
had not received prompt attention it would also 
probably have been lost to her." 

What the mountain people assimilate from the small 
amount of Church History that is given in the mission- 
ary's familiar discourse is an uncertain quantity. 
Sometimes they miss the historic events but hit on the 
philosophy of them. An old man, dying from heart 
trouble, was discussing the Church. "Some people 
say," he gasped, "that the Episcopal Church is just 
a part of the Catholic Church, and I tell them that's 
true in a way. First, there was just one Church and 
that was the Catholic Church, and then some people 
roamed away from it, so they call them the 'Roaming 
Catholics.' But the Episcopal Church is the part of 
the Catholic Church that didn't roam." 

One day in July the Rev. Charles E. Crusoe walked 
twenty-two miles over the mountains to visit a new 
town in Western Kentucky that gave promise of rapid 
growth. It was one year old and had 1,500 inhabitants. 
He canvassed the town, found four communicants, 
three women and one man, organized the women into 
a parish aid society, and set them to work to arouse 
interest in the town for the' building of a church. In 
one year this litth band had been so energetic and 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 95 

successful that they had secured $900 toward the church. 
The missionary bought a lot (once owned by "Red 
Fox," a character in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine") 
in the very centre of the town, now grown to 6,000 
population. After a time more money was received, 
and now a nice church is the place of worship of thirty 
families and forty communicants, and the Church has 
a strong influence in the life of the community. 

Stone churches are ordinarily expensive churches, 
though in many cases local conditions have made them 
the most economical. In Lee County, Kentucky, at 
Beattyville, the county seat, the church is of stone, 
but all the attached mission churches are of frame or 
of logs. The county has an area of 500 square miles 
and a population of about 7,000. Beattyville has a 
little over one thousand population, is situated at the 
three forks of the Kentucky River, and is surrounded 
on every side by high hills. The stone church, which 
stands on an eminence overlooking the town, was 
erected a few years ago from funds collected by the 
former Bishop of Kentucky, Thomas Underwood 
Dudley. Adjoining the church is a large frame 
rectory, built by the missionary, Rev. Alexander 
Patterson, who not only designed the structure, but 
laid the foundations, pieced the frame, and built 
the chimneys, performing the functions both of car- 
penter and of mason. Within a radius of ten miles 
from Beattyville in the country districts are twelve 
missions established and served by Mr. Patterson, 
As he is unable to keep a horse he is obliged to travel 
by foot over the mountains and through the woods 
to hold services at his stations; and as his pedestrian 
tours are somewhat extensive he is called by the 
people "the walkingest man in the country." 



96 Round Robin 

The practical results of Mr. Patterson's ministry 
may be estimated from the following extract from the 
Beattyville "Enterprise" of March 5, 1915. The 
article represents the sentiments of one of the moun- 
tain women, edited only in their expression, and shows 
the changed conditions as they appeal to the native 
wit of one who has seen the light: "Much is being 
said about the 'high cost of living,' which is only a 
misnomer for the 'cost of living high.' As long as 
there are more consumers than producers there will 
always be hard times, for it is impossible for the busy 
few to feed and clothe the army of idlers. We women 
are in a measure to blame for existing conditions. We 
are forcing our husbands to pay hard cash to the 
merchants for many things we could raise or make at 
home. Instead of being helpmates we are just spend- 
thrifts, and are throwing out of the window with a 
spoon faster than our husbands can bring it in at the 
front door with a shovel. Our mothers raised all 
their garden seed, made their vinegar, soap, and 
brooms, and knit the family's winter hosiery — all of 
which we could do if we were a little more industrious. 
They also made for their men folks their shirts and 
underwear, which were just as neat and more serviceable 
than what we force them to buy from the stores today. 
Besides, the price of one shirt will pay for enough 
material for two that will last much longer. By 
keeping a few sheep we could clothe our little children 
for winter without a cent of cost and without labor, 
for the woolen mills will readily make our wool into 
cloth on shares. Garments madte from flannel and linsy 
are more comfortable and look much better than the 
cheap materials bought from the store. The men too 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 97 

come in for their share of the blame. By a careful 
cultivation of the soil the farmer could raise most 
everything needed for home consumption, yet he is 
not doing it. There is no need for a farmer to buy a 
single article of food, save sugar and coffee, and these 
are luxuries, not necessities. Most of our farms are 
surrounded by woodland, and then the farmers will 
argue that it is cheaper to buy coal than to burn wood. 
A few days' work in the fall would lay in a year's 
supply of coal without any cost. Tobacco cultivation 
would be profitable here in the mountains, yet very 
few men ever raise their own tobacco, but will buy it 
from the stores and then sit on the nail kegs while 
they spit it away. The Democrats are cursing the 
European war for the state of affairs, and the Repub- 
licans the Wilson administration: while it is the 
people, not the war, nor rulers, that are responsible for 
hard times. There is a good living here for every 
one that will work for it, and if our pocket books are 
empty it is our fault, not our misfortune." 

The Church that has developed among a native 
people the wise and understanding woman who express- 
es these sentiments and preaches them to her own 
people is a Church that has given good reason for 
being in the community. 

Along the line of Church teaching and the estab- 
lishing of permanent work we may take the Sewanee 
group of missions as an example and quote briefly 
statements made by those in charge for the current 
year. At St. Andrew's School where sixty boys are 
sheltered, clothed, fed and taught, "there are over 
eighty enrolled in the Sunday School, none of whom 



98 Round Robin 

are our school boys. They are of all ages from 
fifty to babes in arms. We have baptized twenty- 
three this winter and have a list of twelve to baptize 
on Palm Sunday. We hope to have a large class for 
Confirmation when the Bishop comes." "A lot has 
been promised the mission at Alto, and it is hoped the 
deed may soon be executed, so that the settlement 
house and chapel may be started. There are at present 
about thirty children in the Sunday school." "A 
good class is being prepared for Confirmation at Jump 
Off." "Sherwood reports a class of about twelve for 
Confirmation." "The mission at Coalmont, built at 
a cost of $1,200, was recently entirely freed from 
debt." "One hundred and fifty dollars has been 
raised with which to begin the building fund for the 
neighborhood house and chapel at Foster Falls." 

These widely different and widely scattered evidences 
of the ability of the Church to influence the life of the 
Highlander are not carefully chosen: they are taken 
at random. What has been accomplished in one 
section has been done in almost every section. What 
has not been done remains undone as a rule, because 
not attempted, or because not undertaken with wise 
forethought, intelligent sympathy, and unwearying 
persistence. 



CHAPTER V. 

MISSIONARY METHODS AND EXPERIENCES. 

The words that closed the preceding chapter must 
open the chapter that deals with missionary methods 
and experiences: "Wise forethought, intelligent sym- 
pathy, and unwearying persistence;" for if the worker 
in the mountains lacks these elements he fights a 
losing fight. Without them the most burning zeal 
will burn itself out without kindling a fire, the greatest 
enthusiasm will grow stone-cold before the wondering 
objects of the enthusiasm discover what it is all about. 
A definite plan must be determined, with due regard 
to the needs and limitations of the people. The 
fundamental guide to right attitude must be the 
resultant admixture of two thoughts: (1) That God 
is no respecter of persons, and (2) That the Father 
pitieth His children and would have his ambassadors 
show his merciful spirit. The harvest will not come 
with the waving of a wand or the clapping of a hand, 
but must be brought through much travail. Its 
delay will give abundant time for patience and perse- 
verance, until the former rain and the latter shall 
come and God approve the work. 

The Highlander is like his native soil. It has rock 
foundation but it needs to be built up and enriched 
before it can show its capability; and the process is 
slow and the result cumulative in building up any 
soil, especially mountain soil. One zealous writer 
has said that even the worst class of mountain people 
are capable of being made over in one generation. 
If he means that after one generation of effort they 



100 Round Robin 

can be brought to the point where they may be safely 
left to their own devices, he is greatly in error. The 
people will have to be made over and over, if the 
purpose of Christ's coming is to be fulfilled, and the 
harvest be gathered that the soil is capable of producing. 

About ten years ago a veteran pioneer of the work 
in Franklin County, North Carolina, addressed a 
missionary gathering and pleaded for workers in the 
field. "But," he said, in effect, "if any of you feel 
like heeding the call don't come unless you are going 
to stick. It is better for the final result that you 
shouldn't come at all than that when you come you 
will play at being a missionary for a year, or two 
years, or even three. Our people are suspicious, 
reserved, uncommunicative to strangers, and you 
can't get over being a stranger in a short time. You 
can't get next to them unless you settle down to live 
among them. If you intend to do missionary work 
in the mountains and hope to be successful in it come 
to be prepared to spend a lifetime in it." The speaker 
hardly exaggerated. He had already been in that one 
field twenty years, and he spoke as he saw. 

The men who volunteered to go into this work are 
coming to see this necessity more and more, and have 
given themselves for life as specialists in the spreading 
of the Gospel in the mountains. Their confidence in 
the outcome is firmer than ever, but their experience 
has taught them that the difficulties and delays will be 
many and long. They have no doubt of victory, but 
they have no illusions of easy victory. If there is one 
thing that the mountain worker gets out of his mind 
more quickly than another it is that "the people of the 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 101 

mountains are crying for the Gospel as this Church 
hath received the same." It is true that the conditions 
cry aloud for the Gospel, but neither here nor elsewhere 
do the people themselves cry for it. After it has been 
preached, illustrated, enforced and experienced through 
a considerable period a small handful will embrace its 
spiritual truth, and a larger number its temporal 
benefits; but the majority will wait suspiciously for 
years to discover what is the real purpose of "them 
Tiscopals" in coming in and spending so much money 
and energy. Their approach is made not by obser- 
vation, but by experience in the family circle of the 
Church's unselfish help all along the line, in nursing 
the sick, burying the dead, helping a girl in serious 
trouble, pleading with the Governor for a law breaker, 
setting a broken bone, in fine, in taking roughness and 
hardship out of life and putting purpose and worth 
into it. 

The wisdom, the spirit, and the persistence with 
which these men and women work, and the experiences 
that come to them, are the burden of this chapter, 
and it has been thought wise to let some of them speak 
in their own words. Their own statements give a 
variety and vividness not otherwise attainable, and 
furnish ample material for a constructive imagination. 

I. A Kentucky Mission Field 

A missionary writes, but desires that his name be 
not published, (for in the mountains letters also, like 
chickens, "come home to roost," and the statements 
in a letter that finds its way back to the mountains are 
often visited on the head of the writer), "In this part 



102 Round Robin 

of the Eastern Kentucky mountains, the Church has 
been estabUshed forty years. In that time this one 
field has had six hundred baptisms and one hundred 
and eighty confirmations. The Church was entirely 
new in these parts, and was established by Bishop 
Dudley, as was the school a few years afterwards. 
Three years ago the school was discontinued, owing 
to the improved educational facilities offered by the 
county. 

"Very great religious effort has been made in these 
mountains by the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, 
Reformers, and the Church. Churches and schools 
have been built in various places, and every centre of 
religious effort has gathered about it some faithful 
adherents. A great deal better work would be done 
were there some understanding among the missioners. 
To-day the cry is for efficiency. We have thirty-four 
ministers of all communions that give their services 
in this county which has a population of a little over 
7,000 — a minister for a little over two hundred people. 
Sunday services are held in at least twenty-five of the 
forty-three schoolhouses. There are five church 

buildings in the town of , and every Sunday we 

have at least three ministers officiating in a community 
whose entire population is 1,100. 

"These men belong to the different denominations. 
Some are ordained, some are not. Many of them 
get nothing for their labors — only their entertainment 
at whatever place they happen to hold service. There 
has been no immigration into this county; conse- 
quently nearly everybody is related. So when some 
young man with ministerial aspirations and a large 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 103 

connection sets out to preach, his folks hang to him, 
and if he behaves himself he soon is sought after to 
hold services. Then there comes along some Holiness 
preacher, or a Come-outer who says there is no need 
of a church. They by their preaching produce excite- 
ment, get a few converts, make family splits. They 
pass on. So does the excitement which they created. 
After a while the situation becomes normal. It is a 
pity that all this energy is not efficiently directed ; for 
we missionaries come into each other's districts, and 
our congregations are not so much worshippers as 
listeners; they are treated to so many doctrinal ideas 
that instead of the peace and assurance that religion 
should give, there is just a touch of uncertainty. 

"A great deal has been said about the mountaineer 
and his ways. I have been among them thirteen 
years. They are just like other people, many of them 
splendid characters, capable and intelligent men and 
women. But in some efforts for progress these are 
not in the majority. 

"We have no hog law, no cow law, no dog law, in 
our town. Result: Fleas, flies, and jangling cow bells, 
and more sickness than we should have where there is 
stock law. Yet about two months ago we put in 
electric lights; for quite a while we have had high 
rents, high priced food, and at all times we have kept 
up with the latest style of clothes. 

"Out in the hills life is comparatively easy for the 
person who can be satisfied with such life and with its 
plain food, and who will not find fault with the cooks. 
Some of the women have not been to cooking school; 
but some of them have, and in some out-of-the-way 



104 Round Robin 

hollow, in a little bit of a cabin, you will be served to 
as well-cooked a meal as you could wish for. 

"This is a rough country, with roads that barely 
deserve that name, with homes in some instances 
that have few attractions, where the children grow 
up and their parents don't care whether they go to 
school or not. Then there are some districts where 
they have intermarried so that it is next to impossible 
to lift the parents or the children to any satisfactory 
plane of civilization. It is from these two classes that 
our criminals come. Our courts sit three months in 
the year. Much money is spent. No one is benefited. Last 
term of court we tried five murder cases. 

"When I was appointed by my Bishop missionary to 
this county I set about to study the problem of crime. 
I lived with families who had evil reputations. Some 
of them had been in the courts for shedding human 
blood, some had passed some years in the penitentiary. 
People used to tell me I would get my throat cut. I 
am free to confess that I could not see any plan for the 
cure of a disorder that these people had been born 
with. The nature of the worst kind of animal was in 
them, and it was not altogether their fault. But they 
had the privilege of handing down to posterity a part 
of their inheritance, to fill the earth with more wicked- 
ness — a wickedness that this advanced age will have 
to deal with scientifically. 

"We have in this county twelve hundred people who 
can neither read nor write. I visit a great many of 
them. Last Lent I started a correspondence school 
among them. Now that was a job. Some could 
read in the primer. Some knew their letters, some 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 105 

did not. But a desire to know something like what 
the person knew who was writing to them aroused 
ambition in some breasts. Books were given them, 
writing paper, pen and ink, a stamp to answer the 
letter of instruction. It was worth while, for among 
those who had not entirely lost the sense of values were 
some who showed much appreciation. Today some 
can read, a few can write, and they are proud of it. 
I had the girls of a Church school in Michigan who 
helped me in this. 

But there are those who never can learn. There is 
nothing for them but to take their place with the 
criminal in the human scrap-pile. This is a pity. 

"I also made a study of the everlasting poverty that 
seemed to cling to some families. Through the kind- 
ness of others I was made almoner, and was enabled 
to help a great many families. But help cannot be 
kept up everlastingly. I went to the Agricultural 
School of the State College for a short time, and took 
instruction in scientific farming, of which I already 
had some knowledge. I bought the best literature on 
the subject, and made some experiments last year 
with the best seeds I could find. Result: A good crop 
of corn and other things. This year we have gone in 
for more extensive experiments. 

"I also have a medicine chest of simple remedies, 
and have very frequent calls for a dose or two. 

"I have certain places to go to during the month to 
hold services — saw-mills, railroad depots, country 
schoolhouses, and the homes of those who live too far 
away from places of public gathering. In a month I 
meet a great many people, and preach to about six 



106 Round Robin 

hundred in all. I have baptized and presented for 
Confirmation a fair proportion. I might have had 
more, but I set down a very strict rule of faith and 
order. It is not every one that I will take. This 
would be a good field for eugenics and some German 
"kultur:" for there are problems that that science 
and that culture would help solve. It is a hard work 
and a great work for the Church; for she can refine 
and uplift those who are capable of being lifted up 
and refined. 

"Last Wednesday I held a teachers' meeting at a 

big saw mill in County. Twelve were present, 

I explained the lesson. At night I held service for 
the workmen and had a good congregation, and last 
Saturday night had service at another big saw mill. 

"What I am going to prepare for is the holding of a 
Sunday school institute for a week or two, with as 
many of those thirty- four ministers as care to come. 
Some of them are real bright fellows, some of them 
can't read. We have a Day School institute here 
every year. I have most of the opening services and 
I give an exposition of whatever Scripture is read. I 
visit the country schools and give the children short 
talks. 

"Most of the other thirty-three ministers belong 
either to the Reformed or to the Christian communions. 
I am the only priest of the Church in ten or twelve 
counties, and I hold services in three of them. I have 
a funeral to-day six miles in the country and it is snowing 
hard. 

"We are to have moonlight schools in the fall." 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 107 

II. What One Missionary Did in Virginia 

The clergyman who has just been quoted adopted 
the method of persuasion in Kentucky. Another clergy- 
man, this time in Virginia, also adopted a method of 
persuasion, but this time the persuasion was directed 
to rouse the public sentiment to change a certain law 
and to enforce the new law. Who he is and what he 
did is thus told by his superior officer Archdeacon Neve: 

"One of the most important events connected with 
our work in the mountains for a long time has been 
the great victory won by Rev. Roy Mason, of Mission 
Home, Virginia. 

"From the time of his first coming into the work 
Mr. Mason has realized that one of the greatest hin- 
drances to the improvement of the condition of the 
mountain people was the distillery. These places 
have been sources of trouble and demoralization all 
the time. The fights and cutting scrapes and other 
forms of disorder have been due almost always to the 
liquor sold at the distilleries. 

"Mr. Mason came to the conclusion that the distiller- 
ies must go if any substantial progress was to be made 
and he set to work to attain this end. He started out 
almost alone, as those who sympathized with him were 
afraid to express their sentiments, owing to the fear of 
the consequences to themselves if they stood out on 
his side. He found it almost impossible to secure 
witnesses against the liquor dealers, although many 
were willing to tell him privately of the illegal acts of 
these men. So he himself has had to bear the brunt 
of the fight alone, well knowing that at any time his 
life might have to be sacrificed for the cause. He, 



108 Round Robin 

however, let it be known that it would be no advantage 
to them to kill him because some one else would 
certainly take his place and carry on the fight until 
the victory was won. 

"As time went on, however, his friends gained 
courage and gradually the sentiment in favor of the 
distilleries changed. Men who had been his oppo- 
nents came to see that he was right and that he was 
simply trying to remove something which had been a 
curse to them and to the community. This was the 
case even with men who had been the best patrons of 
the liquor dealers. And so it came about that Mr. 
Mason was able to put forward witnesses at the trials 
whose testimony proved conclusively that the distilleries 
were breaking the law. 

"The 'seven years' war' has come to an end, through 
the complete triumph of this valiant champion of law 
and order, and on May 1st, 1914, every licensed distil- 
lery in Albemarle and Greene Counties was closed and 
a great stride forward was taken in the work of eman- 
cipating the people from the demoralizing influences 
to which they had been exposed. 

"The fruits of this victory will be found far beyond 
Mr. Mason's own district and he has earned the 
gratitude of all the friends of the mountain people." 

III. Missionary and Distillers at Grips 

It may be said in passing, that illicit distilleries are 
still very much in evidence in the Southern mountains 
and that their number has increased since the pro- 
hibition laws went into effect. In Tennessee in one 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 109 

section of the Cumbuland mountains one hundred and 
six iUicit stills were destroyed by revenue agents in 
the spring and summer of 1915. 

It is evident that even in Virginia there are, in the 
mountains, places that lack culture and refinement, cour- 
tesy and high breeding; but with the characteristic will 
that is underneath his characteristic manner the 
Virginia clergyman, stirred alike for the good name 
of his state and for the betterment of those to whom he 
has come, will not allow any small or great obstacle 
to hold him back from his work of amelioration. When 
good words fail he will throw rocks. When the Gospel 
does not make its appeal he makes his appeal to the law. 
Mr. Mason, whose work was last cited has a worthy 
companion in the Rev. J. R. Ellis. Mr. Ellis's story 
reminds us that the humorous in missionary experience 
is not confined to the Far West as we once thought 
when reading Bishop Talbot's "My People of the 
Plains," and that personal danger to a missionary may 
come elsewhere than in Thibet. He says : 

"Illicit distilling is not profitable now in the Blue 
Ridge — in East Rockingham at least — which accounts 
in large measure for its discontinuance. But wine and 
cider making and selling takes its place to some extent. 
In one case an old man, an old Confederate soldier, 
was warned to let up on his evil doings or the 'law 
would be put on him.' Not desisting he was brought 
to trial and fined. Shortly afterwards he met the 
Missionary and holding him responsible for his undoing, 
he seized rocks in both hands and advancing on him, 
swore he would kill him then and there — and fight to 
the last ditch — in true Confederate style. The Mission- 



110 Round Robin 

ary, of somewhat the same stock and not willing 
ignominiously to quit the field, though as he was on 
horseback he might have done so without serious 
discredit to himself, was put to it to know what to do. 
He had nothing with which to defend himself and was 
wholly at the mercy of this irate man. Doing some 
quick thinking he turned his horse and rode directly 
toward him and looked squarely in his face without 
saying a word. Finishing his 'cussing' the old man 
threw down his rocks and went his way. Later he was 
apprehended and put in jail; the Missionary helped 
to get him out when he thought he was duly punished. 
Now he and the Missionary are the best of friends; 
he comes to Church regularly and vows he will shoot 
the first man that says wine or cider to him. This to 
show that the mountaineer is not the bad man he is 
said to be, but with proper treatment is tractable and 
manageable. 

"On another occasion in Page, where no neighbor- 
hood was thought properly equipped without a distillery, 
there being as many as sixty-six in that small county 
in recent years in operation at one time, the Missionary 
sought to stop the opening of a distillery in the heart 
of the Blue Ridge, because it was to be located near 
one of the churches in his charge. Here was some- 
thing never thought of before, to stop the mountaineer 
in a right guaranteed by the Constitution, as he was 
ready to maintain. But the Missionary essayed to 
do it. 

"Here and there among the people he went trying 
to get someone to back him up in opposition, but 
found never a one to help him. All wanted it and 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 111 

had signed the paper to the Court for it and were 
going to have it — even those, his friends, who he 
thought were loyal to him and the Church. No, all 
had signed and they could not take back what they 
had written and signed. It is too long a story to 
recite here but it would amuse you as it has often 
amused him to know how he sat at home and planned 
what he would do when next he went to that hollow, 
and how all these plans failed on the next visit to see 
the people, and a new plan of operation would be 
formed. Suffice it here to say that the Court was 
friendly as far as Courts can be, and the distillery was 
stopped and today there is not a distillery nor bar 
room in Page County. 

"But this incident happened: Going down the 
little mountain road one day while the discussion 
was at its height, he met an old woman about seventy- 
five years old with whom he had sung on her porch 
one previous Sunday such hymns as delighted her in 
her girlhood — 'Old Time Religion,' 'Old Ship of 
Zion,' etc. Here, thought the missionary, is my friend; 
she will help and be a good witness before the court; 
she has raised a lot of boys and she knows above 
everybody what harm comes from a distillery. 
Howdying with her and biding his time — they move 
slowly, these mountain people — he said, "Old woman," 
in most persuasive tones ,"you don't want that distillery 
here in your midst, do you?" Ah, the. pathetic ring 
of her voice; he hears it now; "No, Preacher, that I 
don't, that I don't." Summoning courage now for 
this prospective witness before the Court he said 
confidently, "Why don't you want this distillery?" 
"Ah, Preacher," and the tone had lost none of its 



112 Round Robin 

pathos, "I raises bees and they go down to the distillery 
and gets drunk off n the druppins and will not come 
home for work." The missionary faintly responded, 
"Oh," as he saw the last hope of a witness for the Court 
dissipate and vanish. 

"The Mountaineers are slow of speech usually; 
sometimes stolid in speech and movement, but their 
words and phrases are to the point. Our 'thread of 
your discourse' becomes with them 'the string of your 
talk;" our 'twilight' or 'dusk' is with them the 'aige of 
dark,' and 'stone's throw' is 'rock reach;' and when the 
mountaineer 'throws his coat' and 'draws a rock' it is 
well to be out of 'rock reach.' But though more or 
less stolid and stoical the Mountaineer must have 
amusements. These he finds in the old time customs 
and usages. The 'bell snickers' wait on a newly 
married couple and the bells and the horns and tin 
pans make a noise that would make bedlam itself 
turn green with envy in its effort to duplicate it. 
(This in East Virginia is the well known 'cally thump,' 
'bell snickers' being of German origin evidently, and 
sure to crop out at Halloween.) 

"They keep religiously the 'Glorious Fourth' with 
the pop-crackers and the jug wherever obtainable, 
and the jug generally finds its way to the mountain 
hollows on such occasions; and Christmas is celebrated 
in pretty much the same way, though it is pleasant to 
say that this practice of keeping Christmas with the 
jug is becoming less and less popular. However, 
the following incident which must close this paper 
shows that the practice has not entirely disappeared : 

"There were two old widows near the Settlement 
House and the Missionary thought it would be nice 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 113 

to play Santa Claus (though 'made in Germany') and 
take these old ladies a bag each of some vegetables 
and some good things to help on their Christmas cheer. 
His son being at home for the holidays he thought also 
it would be a diversion to him to get him to carry the 
bags of good things. So after nightfall with much 
secrecy they trudged through the snow and deposited 
the bags on the step and up against the door and by 
a preconcerted plan they knocked on the door and ran 
off. So far so good. But the son of the old woman 
was home for the Christmas without the knowledge 
of the men. He heard the knock and the running 
from the door and opened the door quietly to learn 
the reason of it. Being a little full of the 'O be joyful' 
he fell over the bags and, with curses loud and deep, 
swore vengeance as soon as he got his guns against the 
boys who as he thought were treating these old people 
that way. The curses and the threats added speed 
to the runners — the would-be Santa Clauses — and it 
was nip and tuck between father and son as to who 
would get over the fence first. The son having had 
much practice on the race course in getting off his 
demerits at school got an old time Marathon-move on 
him and scaled the fence at a bound, and making for 
the nearest town (to call the police, we suppose, or 
perhaps a fellow Monitor) was far and away before the 
father got to the fence and was with difficulty gotten 
back to his own home. Breathless he returned eventu- 
ally and it will be some time before he plays Santa 
Claus in the mountains again — widows or no widows." 

IV. Among the Coal Mines 
The mountain missionary work does not deal with 
the mountain people only. In many sections indus- 



114 Round Robin 

trial development has brought in workmen from the 
outside world and these take their place as legitimate 
objects of the Church's care. Power plants, quarries, 
copper, zinc and coal mines, lumber mills and timber 
camps, are adding rapidly to our opportunity and 
responsibility. 

Here is what the Rev. J. Edmund Thompson tells of 
the new field that has opened up in Letcher County, 
Kentucky, among the coal miners: 

"The country is very rough and the valleys are 
narrow, except the valley of Boone Fork which is quite 
wide at McRoberts and Fleming. The mountains are 
between two thousand and three thousand feet high. 
There is a very heavy growth of timber of the hard- 
wood variety. While a great deal of the timber has 
been cut and used there is still much that has been 
untouched. 

"The coal company began operations in Letcher 
County in the spring of 1912. There was no railroad, 
and no wagon road; so the first thing that was done 
was to build the road to Pound, Virginia, through 
Pound Gap in Pine Mountain to where the town of 
Jenkins now stands. After months of work the road 
was com.pleted and mining machinery was brought in 
by way of Norton, Virginia, and thence over the 
company's road to Jenkins. This means of trans- 
portation was carried on until enough machinery had 
been brought in to set up a temporary power plant 
and to begin on the 204 mine. 

"About the time the road from Pound was completed 
the coal company, having failed in their negotiations 
with the Louisville & Nashville and Chesapeake 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 115 

& Ohio railroads, began to build their own railroad 
from Shelby, a point on the Big Sandy Division on the 
Chesapeake & Ohio about thirty miles to the north- 
east. This road grew steadily, being built from 
Jenkins towards Shelby and from Shelby towards 
Jenkins at the same time. After some fifteen miles 
had been built an offer was made by the Baltimore & 
Ohio; the coal company accepted, and the Sandy 
Valley and Elkhorn Railroad became a part of the 
Baltimore & Ohio system, which completed the road. 
Thus Jenkins was linked to the outside world. 

"After the completion of the railroad it was only a 
question of hours rather than months when the town 
and mines would become realities. The coal company 
came into a wilderness and built an ideal mining 
town. The ordinary shack houses for the miner were 
not in the plans. The miner was to have a good, 
comfortable and substantial house in which to live. 
Each house has electric lights and all have deep driven 
wells, either next to the house or one for every two, 
or three houses. The houses are two stories and have 
from five to eight rooms. In the houses occupied by 
the officers there are hot water heaters, bath, running 
water, and electric light. The water supply for the 
upper Jenkins region, as the residential portion of 
town is called, is supplied by six springs all connected 
and flowing into a concrete reservoir situated up on 
the side of Pine Mountain to the south. The reservoir 
is about 20 X 40 X 60 feet. 

"The electrical power is derived from steam turbine 
generators whose supply of water comes from an 
artificial lake made by placing a concrete dam across 
the lower end of the Little Elkhorn Creek. This dam 



116 Round Robin 

is about 40 feet high and possibly 25 or 30 feet thick 
at the base. The power generated at this central 
plant is distributed to all the mines in Jenkins which 
are eight in number; all at McRoberts, Fleming, 
Raymond and the operations on Beaver Creek. The 
current is carried by means of high tension transmission, 
with a voltage of 44,000 reduced by sub-stations at 
each mine. 

"The people of Jenkins and these other places are 
importations — the miner is mostly foreign and from 
Southern Europe, the others from West Virginia, 
Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. The moun- 
taineer is a rara avis in these immediate parts. He 
left years ago because of the non-productiveness of 
the soil and took up his residence along the Kentucky 
River or else settled in Whitesburg, the County seat. 
The few that were left when the coal company came 
in moved away. Hence the mountain work here is 
nothing but parish work with rural surroundings. 
The mountaineer was offered work by the company, 
but he is a peculiar people and could not understand 
why he could not work for two or three days and then 
'lay oflf' for the rest of the week. Nor could he see 
why, when he did come back, his job was filled by 
someone else. He wanted to be paid by the day and 
wanted his money at the end of each day. This was 
not the way with the coal company, and when he was 
told he would be paid for the time he had worked, 
but only twice a month, he decided he would leave 
and go where the rules were made by the employees 
rather than by the employer. 

"Since the miner is mostly Roman Catholic and the 
white people are nearly all from cities and towns where 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 117 

our Church has been established for years their atti- 
tude is very friendly. The mountaineer when found 
is mostly very bitter against every communion except 
his own, which is generally one of the many varieties 
of the Baptist. He is even hostile toward other 
branches of his own denomination, and consequently 
the missionary Baptist has a hard time in these parts. 

"The coal company has built and maintains schools 
in all its mining towns and camps. The children are 
compelled to attend school, and if they do not go 
their father is fined for not making them go and the 
fine is collected from his pay. The schools are well 
attended as a result, and many a foreigner's child is 
receiving an education which otherwise might be left 
to go by the board. 

"I have gone all over Letcher County and visited 
at mountain homes which have been greatly improved, 
so I am told, since, 'Them city fellers come in with the 
company.' They listen to your preaching very atten- 
tively but think you are wrong and they are right; they 
try to argue 'much water against little water' for 
baptism, and then get angry when you show them 
that the Church does not specify either to be the 
proper mode. The Prayer Book seems to be a sore 
point with many, for they say they don't want their 
prayers read out of a book. These two points seem 
to give most of the trouble. They like the Mission 
Hymnal but prefer the Gospel Hymns contained in it. 

"There are many mountain cemeteries around here 
and the old custom is retained of building little houses 
over each grave. Some of these are quite elaborate, 
having a lot of scroll saw work and even fancily cut 



118 Round Robin 

shingles on the roof. Some have even gone so far as 
to put sheet iron on the roof. This material was 
obtained from the worn out stoves of well-to-do 
neighbors, particularly from the ovens. When asked 
why they build houses over the graves the answer was 
cryptic — see what you can make of it — 'It is to give 
them rest and peace in their last sickness.' 

"To show how far these people have lived from the 
outside world! One of the coal company's foresters, 
a Mr. R. F. Paine and myself were at the head of the 
Kentucky River and seeing a cabin on the side of the 
mountain we stopped in and asked for a drink of 
water. The old man, who came to the door in response 
to our hail, requested us to 'light and hitch' which we 
did. He went into the house but soon returned with 
a jug and two gourds. Paine looked at me and raised 
his eyebrows, for the jug had all the marks of being 
an own brother to the moon-shine jug. Instead of 
that fiery liquid it contained butter milk. After 
we had each accepted a gourd full and tasted it Paine 
remarked to me, 'How much better this would be if 
it had some ice in it.' The old man heard him and 

fairly glaring at Paine remarked, 'Who in ever 

heard of ice in August?' Paine tried to convince the 
old man that there could be such a thing, but the old 
fellow was firm and we left him still unconvinced that 
ice could be had in August. 

"The mountaineer is as curious as a child and in 
this regard is a near relative to some of his more 
enlightened brethren in the outside world, the only 
difference being that the outsider has more tact in 
attaining the same end. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 119 

"I was called to see a man who was dying. He was 
surrounded by his friends and neighbors who were 
trying to comfort him. He was a Churchman, the 
only one in that part of the country. He had expressed 
his desire to see an Episcopal minister and had refused 
the offices of a Roman priest and a Methodist minister; 
so one of his friends came for me. 

"After some conversation with him I asked him if he 
desired Holy Communion; he said that was what 
he had sent for me for, so I began the service. By 
the time I had finished the house and the yard were 
full of people, mostly men. I talked with him and in 
fact talked with the whole crowd, some of whom had 
never seen a Communion service. I answered questions 
from the spectators and the old man. He was very 
weak and died about two hours after I had finished the 
service. After making the arrangements for the 
burial I started back to Jenkins and returned the 
next day and had the funeral." 

V. A Life Story 

The workers in our mission fields are not all clergy- 
men and deaconesses. Some of them are laymen, 
and their functions are purely administrative or 
financial. Some of them give their time as field 
agents for the Bishop, describing the work, soliciting 
funds, or even acting as salesman for products of the 
industrial schools. One of these last, a typical 
mountain boy, of humblest parentage, who had 
pluck and endurance to overcome insurmoun- 
table obstacles, has, at the author's request, 
furnished this brief account of his life down to the 



120 Round Robin 

time when he estabUshed what later become one of 
the four industrial schools of the District of Asheville : 

"I was the third and youngest son of a poor and 
uneducated woman, who herself was born and raised 
in the mountains, her father, an Irishman by descent, 
having been born in the foothills of Virginia. My 
home life and early associations were not such as 
would make for the highest thoughts and purest 
morals. 

"I early remember the large one room log house 
without an overhead ceiling, and the large rock chimney 
only a little above the ridge-pole — the result of which 
was that the logs caught fire many times and were 
extinguished by dashing water on them. I remember 
my mother going to the field to clear and clean up the 
land ready for plowing and planting, and doing an all 
day's work washing for the neighbors for only twenty- 
five cents. 

"There was no religious or other kind of teaching in 
the home except the rod and hard abuse — this coming 
to the children from others rather than from the 
mother. Sad it is for a boy who has half a dozen 
bosses who seem to delight in punishing with no word 
of sympathy. He begins to think that everybody is 
against him, and he begins to hate and plan revenge 
on those whom he takes as enemies. 

"I have no recollection of a school or a schoolhouse 
anywhere in the neighborhood in my early years, the 
result being that I knew nothing of books. Until 
the age of nine or ten I was teased and tormented by 
larger boys who nicknamed me and called me *a gal,' 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 121 

because I wore a dress, not knowing from my own 
experience what a suit of boy's clothes was. 

"I well remember the first pair of pants I ever 
wore — an old pair given me by the mother of another 
boy my own size. They were made of cotton plaids 
or 'checks,' as it was called. The first time I ever 
went to school I wore the cotton check pants and was 
made fun of. 

"I went to school but little, and learned what little 
I did in Webster's 'Blue Back Speller,' this being the 
only book I ever had until I got a Second Reader, 
paying for it by the sale of a chicken and by the help 
of an added nickel given by my elder brother. 

"I knew not what it was to have a new pair of shoes, 
but wore old ones of all sizes that had been discarded 
by others. 

"I knew nothing about the beautiful and pleasant 
things of life. 

"An accident which nearly took my life happened 
when I was about seven or eight years old. I was 
out in the field with my uncle, and a large log rolled 
over me. The only thing that saved my life was 
a knot or a short limb on the log, which lifted so much 
of the weight that the log went over me without 
serious hurt. 

"I had many fights and difficulties with the children 
in the neighborhood. 

"At the age of twelve I went with an uncle by mar- 
riage to South Carolina to work in the cottonmills, 
one of my brothers having already gone. I made 
from fifteen to twenty-five cents a day, but my uncle 
got it all for my board. 



122 Round Robin 

"In the mills I had fights with the other boys. I was 
dissatisfied and homesick, and finally returned home 
by myself, arriving home with only twenty-five cents 
in my pocket, and this was given me by a man in 
Spartanburg, South Carolina. I was so pleased to 
get home that I gave the twenty-five cents to my old 
grandmother with whom my mother was living. 

"There was a short public school in the settlement 
but I did not go. I had no books, and I had plenty 
of work to do at home. I cut and carried fire-wood, 
carried the corn to the mill to be ground, and did other 
kinds of work. The next year or two following I 
went to school a few days and weeks, and learned to 
read a little and write so it could be read. 

"At the age of sixteen I again went to the cotton 
mills, this time in Asheville. There I worked the 
first two weeks without pay. Then I was paid forty 
cents a day; then on up gradually to fifty-five cents a 
day. I stayed there ten months, paying eight or 
nine dollars a month board, and in that time saved 
forty dollars. This was a fortune to a boy who had 
never handled so much money in his life. While here 
I read 'The Story of Jesus' and the New Testament 
and learned the multiplication table while at work. 

"The following spring I went back to my own 
county and made a bargain with an uncle by marriage 
and worked all spring and summer for my board for 
six months that I might attend the school near by. 
At this school I had much trouble. I was embarrassed 
because I knew so little and some boys wanted to 
run over me, but I stayed the six months. Then I 
went to the cotton mills again and worked at seventy 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 123 

cents a day, and went back home and went to school 
six months more, this time staying with my grand- 
mother, mother and brothers. After close of school 
I worked again for my board and five dollars; then 
returned to the same school for another six months. 

"Then I attended a Teachers' Institute and took an 
examination. I got a second grade certificate and 
taught a public school at eighteen dollars a month for 
about three months. Afterward I went to a small 
college in Tennessee, remaining while my money 
lasted. When it gave out I went back to the mountains 
and taught again. Then I went to the Tennessee 
Normal College and paid a part of my expenses by 
sweeping the college buildings. It took me all day on 
Monday to sweep the entire building; and to keep the 
rooms swept as need required I swept every day from 
the time school was closed till supper time, and some- 
times before breakfast. 

"Leaving the college I went to the University of 
Tennessee, in Knoxville, and reached there with about 
two dollars in my pocket. I gave my note for room 
rent and incidental expenses, borrowed some bed 
clothes, bought a small oil stove and a few vessels, 
and did my own cooking. Working holidays and odd 
hours during the day at ten or fifteen cents an hour at 
any kind of work I could get to do, I earned money 
with which to buy food and other necessaries. The 
hardness of the life wore me out, I became discouraged 
and came very near leaving the University and going 
to work; but at this critical time I received words of 
encouragement from the President of the University 
and others, and I determined to stick it out. 



124 Round Robin 

"While here a high purpose came into my mind and 
Ufe, the purpose and desire to estabUsh a school up in 
my mountain section — an industrial school where the 
poor boys and girls might have an opportunity to get 
an all round practical education. I told my plans to 
the President who spoke with sympathy and interest. 

"I taught again the district school. After the close 
of the three month's school I began my efforts to 
interest people in the industrial school proposition, 
but few had any faith in this proposition." 

Thus far writes the young man. Space is lacking 
to give the whole story of how he struggled for some 
years and established an independent work, and them 
came in touch with the Church and Bishop Horner, 
who became so interested that he took over the plant 
as a part of the work of the District of Asheville and 
established what is now known as the Appalachian 
Industrial School at Penland. This much has been 
told to illustrate the purposefulness of the young man 
of the mountains when he is started aright, and to 
drive home the thought that the persons who are to 
develop the Church's activities are living in the moun- 
tains now, inefficient only because undeveloped. 



CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS YET TO DO. 

The problem of the Highlander is a permanent 
problem. Thousands have been induced to leave 
their mountains and go to the cotton mills, and some 
students have from this fact concluded that possibly 
the solution of the problem lies in the transplanting 
of the whole population to the mills. It seems hardly 
necessary to discuss this solution, yet it can not be 
ignored. 

Let this much then be said: Granted that these 

people could be deported, their unskilled hands are 

fitted only for the cotton mills; and the cotton mills 

could not use any noticeable fraction of them. Already 

the mountain folk that have formed the cotton mill 

towns have raised serious moral and economic problems 

hardly second in difficulty to those of the mountains 

themselves — not the least serious being the tendency 

to tuberculosis, and the prevalent attempt of the 

father and mother to live on the earnings of their brood 

of children. And if it were possible to direct the 

labor supply into other channels it would at once come 

into conflict with the present labor market of the 

South, which is unable to assimilate so much unskilled 

labor in a generation. And finally the Mountain 

people have strong local attachment. They are 

unwilling to leave their homes, and they can not be 

moved forcibly. Just as the problem of the Negro 

must be worked out in America because the Negro is 

here and can not be carried to Africa, so the problem 

of the Mountain people may not be carried down to the 

lowlands and solved there. 



126 Round Robin 

The mountains will not come to the Church; there- 
fore the Church must go to the mountains. 

I. Why the Church's Mountain Work Must 
Be Developed 

Three possible courses lie before the Church in 
connection with this Mountain Work. She can con- 
tinue at it in a half-hearted way; she can withdraw 
from it entirely; or she must press it forward vigorously. 

It can be regarded as one of the Church's agencies 
of which we know little and care less; but since the 
Church took it in hand loyalty to the Church demands 
that some little assistance be given it. 

It can be regarded as a blunder into which the 
Church was led by blind enthusiasts; and since the 
Church is not particularly attractive to these people 
she should withdraw from the Quixotic attempt to 
make Episcopalians out of them. 

Or it can be regarded as a challenge to the Church's 
unselfish devotion; and since no wealth and prestige 
in worldly things can come to her or be taken from 
other churches by her efforts here she should exert 
herself to the utmost to demonstrate the uplifting 
power of the Gospel of Christ among neglected Ameri- 
cans as well as among benighted Filippinos. 

The second course may be dropped from considera- 
tion altogether. To continue the work half-heartedly 
is either to disapprove, or to be so uncertain as to be 
inefficient. If it is not worth doing well it is not worth 
doing at all. Either our efforts in the mountains 
should be redoubled or they should be abandoned. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 127 

Our mission to the mountains is only a part of our 
mission to the world, and whatever argument is good 
against missionary work anywhere else is probably 
valid against missionary work in the mountains. On 
the general argument for missions it is not necessary 
to say anything here. 

But granted that the Church intends to be faithful 
to her commission from Christ, "Go ye into all the 
world and preach the Gospel," it is pertinent to make 
two assertions: First. The people of the mountains 
are not, to say the least, inferior to the Negro to whom 
the Church carries this Gospel, or to the East Sider in 
New York, to whom she brings its ministration. In 
physique, in intelligence, and in will they are capable, 
when disciplined and developed, of taking no mean 
place in the world's hisory. Of that fact they have 
already given guarantee in the collective cases cited 
in the first chapter of this book, and in multitudes of 
individual cases. Second. The Church is not inferior 
to the numerous denominations that are ministering 
to the mountain people. In the truth of the Gospel 
as she presents it in its fullness, without stressing one 
point at the expense of another; in her adaptability in 
modifying methods to suit conditions, while yet 
fearlessly holding to truth and righteousness, sub- 
ordinating the non-essential things to the things that 
are necessary; and in that sympathetic helpfulness 
that does not declare a fault without proposing a 
virtue and that will, while denouncing a sin, show a 
kindly spirit to the offender, the Church has no reason 
to be ashamed of her record in the mountain as a 
faithful witness to Jesus Christ, or to be doubtful of a 
future harvest as the reward for her past fidelity. 



128 Round Robin 

To say that the people of the mountains are 
capable of receiving high benefit from the Church and 
that the Church has the channels, the substance, and 
the ministers by which to meet their needs amply, is 
not to make a bare assertion; it is to say what the 
Church has proved time after time and is still proving. 
If she were not able to serve them, it would be well 
to ask, "Is her failure due to her lack of the spirit of 
Christ? Or is it due to the inability of some persons 
to receive the Gospel? If not to either of these causes 
to what can it be due?" 

When the ancestry of the Highlander is considered 
it is inherently probable that the preaching of the 
Gospel of the larger life of the sons of God will meet 
with larger response from him than from those who 
have no such ancestry. If, as is true, effete peoples 
can be regenerated by the Gospel, still more can unde- 
veloped strength make encouraging response. And 
if we are discouraged at the difficulties in awakening 
the Highlander, who has slept for two hundred years, 
ethnological reasons should make us despair in approach- 
ing an entire race, the Chinese ,that has slept more than 
two thousand years. 

Yet in making this plea for encouragement and for 
incitement to duty we would not be understood as 
intimating that the Highlander will remain asleep if 
the Church does not awaken him. We do say that 
he will not awaken as soon or with as clear a mind if we 
delay or play with the opportunity; but we -are not 
the only agencies at work. Attention has already been 
directed to the organized work, chiefly evangelistic 
and educational, that the various leading denominations 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 129 

especially the Presbyterians, A-Iethodists, and Baptists 
are doing in the mountains. Not only denominational 
but secular agencies are vigorously at work to awaken 
the sleeper. Berea College, Kentucky, has 1,700 
students and a budget of $120,000 a year, of which 
one-half is raised annually from current gifts. The 
Willard Industrial School near Landrum, South Caro- 
lina, in a section where two-thirds of the population 
are illiterate, has 125 students. Lincoln Memorial 
University, at Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, has 750 
students. Maryville College, Tennessee, has an enroll- 
ment of nearly 800, and an income from all sources of 
$48,000. Grandview Normal Institute, at the east- 
ern edge of the Cumberland Range, north of Chatta- 
nooga, has an enrollment of about 300. The Martha 
Berry School in Floyd County, Georgia, has property 
valued at a quarter of a million dollars and has several 
hundred students. The Southern Industrial Institute 
at Camp Hill, Alabama, has about 100 students. In 
Asheville the Presbyterians have four schools whose 
permanent plants have an aggregate value of $265,000 
and whose total enrollment in 1913 was 550. 

These are only a few outstanding instances of many 
undertakings, for at strstegic points in every state 
similar schools are located. Some are denominational, 
some are not. Some are co-educational, some are 
not. Most of them embrace industrial features, 
some do not. A hard and fast rule of procedure is not 
attempted. The rule is first to determine what is the 
especial need of this section, and then to undertake so 
much as is practicable. Occasionally the judgment is 
bad and the work poor, but generally the vision, the 
effort, and the spirit leave little to be desired. In 



130 Round Robin 

addition to the larger schools many small day-schools 
are conducted as feeders for the boarding schools 
and as possible beginnings of boarding schools. These 
large schools are trying to do for the people of the 
mountains what Hampton, Lawrenceville, St. Augus- 
tine (Raleigh), and Tuskegee are trying to do for the 
negro, or St. John's, Shanghai, for the Chinese, and their 
effect is noticeable when the lives of the students are 
followed up in their mountain homes to which many 
return. 

"If these agencies are so successful why not leave 
the work to them, and address ourselves to something 
else?" This very natural question has been often asked. 

It has been so often asked also in parish matters 
that nearly every worker has heard it: "Mrs. A. teaches 
her class so well that I would be ashamed to take a 
class," "The choir sings so well that I can add nothing 
to the music," "The income of the church is so large 
and Mr. X gives such a sum, that what little I could 
do would be of no help." The remark is protean in 
shape, but in spirit it is one. It is the voice of sloth 
disclaiming moral obligation to serve God with what 
gifts it received from God, be the gifts of others what 
they may. As there are parishioners that are drones, 
so there may be national Churches that are drones. 
Men do not stay out of goldfields, professions, or lines 
of business because so many are already at work in 
them. The very fact that so many are at work leads 
the vigorous man to think "there is something to 
work for;" and he adds one more to the number — if 
he has any courage and strength. 

The very fact that so many religious societies and 
other agencies are working among the Highlanders 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 131 

should be an argument for active participation by the 
Church, in that it is declaration from beyond our 
borders that the effort is necessary and the result 
promising. 

"But is not the field already overcrowded with 
workers, and will not our participation on a larger 
scale make matters worse?" 

That question also has been asked, but not by any 
one who has carried his eyes and his mind into the 
Southern Appalachians. If only the present workers 
of all names and classes are to better the conditions of 
the Southern Highlander at least nine-tenths of the 
Highlanders will have died without having their 
condition bettered, and without suspecting that any 
one in existence was trying to better it. It is doubtless 
true that in a few cases (one, indeed, was quoted in 
Chapter V) agencies do overlap and there is a conges- 
tion of instrumentalities. That however is a purely 
local condition, and it is a rare condition. The general 
condition is such that the present agencies could be 
multiplied ten- fold without creating an adequate 
force. "There is glory enough for all," said one of 
Santiago. "There is work enough for all," we can 
say of the uplift agencies in the Southern Appalachians. 

If the Church stands still in this mountain work she 
will retrograde. There is a world of philosophy in 
Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter's explanation of his 
breathless condition:" I am out of breath from running 
so hard to stay where I am." The world's activities 
are a moving procession. One has only to stand still 
to fall behind. Lack of progress is relative retrogres- 
sion. All other agencies are developing their activities 



132 Round Robin 

in the mountains, and if the Church fails to develop 
her own her contribution to the solution of the great 
problem will be of even less importance than it now 
is, and it is now of far less importance than a half- 
dozen other factors. 

But lack of progress is not only relative retrogres- 
sion, it is absolute retrogression. The merchant 
whose store front and stock fails to keep pace with the 
development of the community not only is of de- 
creasing importance relatively in the commercial life 
of the city; he finds that he is of decreasing significance 
to himself, he begins to think that he must have been 
big enough for only a small place and that he is not 
equal to large opportunities. For a time he can 
keep his self-love by calling to mind his past achiev- 
ments; but when he finds that the community is 
looking not for past achievements but for present 
achievements he will become discouraged, and being 
discouraged he will not expand his business but will 
dry up in himself. "Ilium fuit, et ingens gloria Dadanum" 
was one of the saddest plaints of ancient literature. 
Today the glory of the Church is not in what she did 
but in what she is doing. To paraphrase a famous 
saying, "Her past glory declares not her discharge 
from present duties but her debt." If we show our- 
selves so lacking in zeal that we are content to fall 
behind in dealing with the conditions of our less for- 
tunate fellow citizens in the mountains, the reaction 
on the vitality of the national Church will be disastrous. 
Over and over again it is observed that the missionary 
parish is the living parish, and that the non-missionary 
parish is dead. That is true also of the Church at 
large. 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 133 

If the Church is not moved by the opportunities 
and necessities in the Southern mountains to develop 
her work there it is difficult to see what legitimate appeal 
could arouse her missionary spirit in any part of the 
world. The Christian rule from the first has been: 
We must do good to all men: but chiefly to them of our 
own household. 

11. The Scope and Spirt of This Develop- 
ment 

The proper development of this work will not permit 
advance in only one department. It must be all 
along the line: in Christian teaching, in mental training, 
and in social betterment. 

Evangelism must have the primacy in this advance. 
The definite presentation of the Faith once delivered 
to, the saints is the chief need of the mountain people. 
That Faith is the bed-rock of Christian living, and 
without the declaration of the content of that Faith 
men cannot be brought to Christ. 

There is a tendency in some quarters to belittle this 
chief function of the Church in order to exalt the min- 
istry of benevolence and philanthropy, and it is declared 
that the good works will themselves speak for Christ. 
Hence appeals for hospitals, schools, industrial centres 
and the like receive a more sympathetic hearing than 
appeals for funds to build a new church or to open up a 
new group of preaching places. "Write me as one 
who loves his fellow men" is the thought that so 
exhibits itself. It is a noble thought, but Ben Adhem's 
spirit does not measure up to a higher spirit. When 
we build hospitals, and support nurses, and open school, 



134 Round Robin 

and develop individual capacities, the mind of the 
majority of those helped does not ask, "What has led 
these people to do these things." They ordinarily 
accept the benefit without inquiring further. 

Certainly the least we Christian folk can do is to 
declare what is moving us; "The love of Christ con- 
strains us." And if we do that we shall have to 
declare the nature, the functions, and the relationship 
of Christ, and the breadth and unselfishness and 
reproductive power of his love. We are not following 
Apostolic precedent when we exclaim "Rise up and 
walk" unless we precede that command by the decla- 
ration of our authority and power, "In the name of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth." 

This preaching is needed in the mountains. What 
the bulk of the Highlanders get in the way of preaching 
while satisfying the hearers is entirely unsatisfactory 
as a declaration of the counsel of God. It does not 
lead the people anywhere but in a circle. They are 
not helped by our minimizing or denying of this fact. 
They can be helped by the candid acknowledgment 
of it as a fact and by our attempt to change the kind 
of preaching they get by sending them preachers who 
have an intelligent conception of the Gospel of Christ 
and of its power to change men's lives. 

When we thus exalt evangelism to its proper first 
place we can proceed to say that that will be a dead 
evangelism which contents itself with words only. 
The works also must bear witness to Christ. This 
applies to education and social betterment alike, for 
the sons of God must serve God with body and mind 
as well as with spirit, and the clear head and the 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 135 

strong and disciplined body are needed to accomplish 
the work of the Spirit. 

Certainly it is the State's duty to care for her unedu- 
cated, undeveloped, and unfortumate; for all are 
members of the civic body and the care of weak members 
is the obligation of the whole body. It is the State's 
duty to provide ample schools and efficient instructors 
for the uneducated, orphanages and hospitals for the 
deserted, and manual training and domestic science 
teaching for the youths and maidens. To some 
extent this is being done. But the progress is slow, 
and the public sentiment is not vigorous enough to 
accelerate the speed. 

Here is a place where united action can be taken by 
all religious communions. They should by concurrent 
action, or by action through a joint committee in each 
state, arouse public sentiment and urge the legisla- 
tures to appropriate action in the more rapid estab- 
lishment of educational and eleemosynary institutions, 
thus leaving the missions freer to do the work which 
they are especially set to do. There is no reason v\^hy 
one group of citizens should be regarded as especially 
chargeable with what is the common responsibility 
of the State, and the mere fact that this group, which 
is the group of Christ's disciples, assumes the respon- 
sibility gladly does not lessen the State's responsibility. 

Christian workers have been too timid in this matter. 
The time has come to make as strong a demand for the 
multiplication of instrumentalities of salvation as for 
those of extermination. The Hon. Samuel H. Thomp- 
son, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State 
of Tennessee, in an address to a large meeting of 



136 Round Robin 

mountain workers held in the city of Knoxville in 1914 
said: "It will be many years in my opinion before the 
denominations and foundations can afford to withdraw 
their aid from this section of the country. Of course, as 
soon as the State provides adequate educational 
facilities you will no longer be needed except in a 
purely denominational way. But that is so far in the 
future that I am sure you do not need to seriously 
consider that matter yet. So long as forty-six counties 
in Tennessee have five months or less of public school, 
and only six counties have eight months or more there 
is great reason for every sort of educational agency." 

Concerted action and widespread pressure can 
hasten the time when the whole civic body will meet 
its own responsibilities of preparation of the growing 
and refuge for the unfortunate; but until that time 
shall come, and so long as these works of mercy are not 
done largely and generously by the State, the Church 
can not stand back and allow human beings to suffer 
because the responsible party does not meet its respon- 
sibility. She must again repeat what she has done all 
through her history in Europe: Do the State's work 
so well and thoroughly that by and by the State 
will take it over and relieve the Church of further 
obligation in the matter. 

The question has doubtless arisen in the minds of 
many: "What good will all this effort, all this expendi- 
ture of men and money involved, bring to the Church?" 
In other words: "Even if success should crown all our 
efforts, what benefit is to accrue to the Church that she 
should exert herself to join in a work that cannot add to 
her resources, and that is not particularly desired by 
those among whom she is to work?" 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 137 

Let it be distinctly understood that in going into the 
mountains the Church is not taking thought of her 
stature; she can well ignore the cubit if she attends 
to the work. She is going there not to swell her 
membership but to build up the neglected children of 
God. She does add to her membership, but even 
where she does not the work may succeed. Not all 
the fruit of the Spirit is ecclesiastical. If, as has 
occurred time and again, children of Baptist families 
are sent to our parochial schools in the mountains and 
there learn not only the "Three R's" but also the 
"Fourth R" (Righteousness), and perhaps a fifth 
(Religion), and then go back to their own denomination 
and join it, has the Church failed? Or has she succeed- 
ed? If the child is rendered more efficient and has 
discovered higher standard of right has not the work 
been, in so far, a success, though a new member was 
not added? 

What is our religion intended to do? How does the 
Church do it? These are the two questions and the 
only two by which we can justly measure our present 
and future success in the mountains. 

Our answer to the former of these questions will be 
the measure of our own vision. 



III. The Agencies to be Used 

In urging a forward movement in this work we are 
reminded of the saying of one of America's great sea 
captains, whose vessel was sinking, and who was asked 
if he was ready to surrender: "Ready to surrender?," he 
shouted back, "I have not yet begun to fight." 



138 Round Robin 

As much as the Church has already accomplished 
in the mountains she has, in truth, not yet begun to 
fight. She is yet in the beginning of things, in the pioneer 
stage of her adventure for God, with vast reaches of 
country untouched, with great investments yet to 
be made in undeveloped human power, and with 
generations to come and go before the full significance 
and value of her undertakings shall fully declare 
themselves. She is called upon to walk by faith, but 
that faith differs not in essence from the faith with 
which large investors are pouring into these same 
mountains millions of dollars, whose returns will come 
to their children but not to themselves. Surely the 
Church will not permit the children of this world to be 
in this particular also wiser than the children of light. 

In opening up her aggressive campaign in the moun- 
tains the Church does not need to revolutionize her 
agencies. There is no reason why the present agencies 
should be displaced, and to that extent be discredited. 
The part of true wisdom will be to bring new strength 
and support to the present agencies, to give to those 
who have been making brick without straw the oppor- 
tunity to show what can be done when the material 
is in hand with which to work. 

The machinery for a forward movement is already 
ample. The national Church, through its Board of 
Missions; the sectional Church, through the Synods 
of the Third and Fourth Provinces; the dioceses 
immediately concerned, through their Bishops, con- 
ventions and boards of missions; and the local centres 
already established, through the archdeacons, and other 
missionaries in the field, these furnish ample machinery 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 139 

to meet all the present problems and to deal with what- 
ever other problems may be raised because of develop- 
ment of the work. 

It is true that many details of the interrelationship of 
all these agencies, especially of the General Church, 
the Province, and the Diocese, remain to be settled; 
for example, the relative burdens to be carried by the 
General Board and by the Diocesan Boards; the extent 
to which the Bishop shall delegate to the General 
Board a more effective voice in the appointment of 
workers; the extent to which the Board and the 
Bishops shall request larger co-operation by the appro- 
priate bodies of the Provincial Synod, etc. These 
details will be adjusted gradually and, for a time, 
satisfactorily, but to the end of the chapter they will be 
subject to continual readjustment because of the 
changing conditions of the work and of the Church's 
mind concerning it. All this is wrapped up with the 
life of the Church. The mechanical details demand the 
least part of our attention and will be solved in the 
going of the work. 

What is needed is a more earnest spirit in dealing 
with our chosen agencies, more intelligent acquaintance 
with the Church's undertakings, and more liberal con- 
tributions of money. Then the workers will not need 
to take so much of their time in what is euphemistically 
called "presenting the claims of the mountain people." 
Then they may, in time of work, work in their fields and 
not out of them, and in time of recreation be relieved 
from that burden, "How can the work be supported?" 
which at present clings about them with the wearing 
clutch of the Old Man of the Sea. 



140 Round Robin 

Without making invidious distinctions, and without 
suggesting that the specifying of certain fields as commen- 
dable means that they are more commendable than 
other fields, but naming them because they are examples 
of work well and thoroughly done but incapable of 
being supported by what sums the General Board of 
Missions now contributes, we cite as agencies that 
have passed the experimental stage and have demon- 
strated their right to live more largely and fully: 
Archdeacon Spurr's work in West Virginia and Arch- 
deacon Neve's in Virginia; Bishop Burton's school at 
Corbin, Kentucky; Bishop Horner's four industrial 
schools; Mrs. Wetmore's school at Arden, Mrs. Hugh- 
son's hospital at Morganton and Mr. Wilcox's mission 
work about Hendersonville, North Carolina; the mis- 
sion work of St. Mary's and St. Andrew's near Sewanee, 
and the Emerald-Hodgson Hospital in the same place 
but under different management. Of the admirable work 
done in many places it is impossible in this book to 
give adequate description, and a catalogue would 
be, as regards the Appalachians, simply a reprinting 
of the Church Annuals. All the named and unnamed 
places are the heart and core of whatever campaign 
the Church makes in the mountians, and the ample 
support of them is fundamental in all sound strategy. 
It need not be feared that any of them will receive 
too liberal support. Gifts have not begun to reach 
the point where they will endanger the self respect 
of the workers, or weaken their moral fibre. 

In this connection, however, we cannot ignore two 
questions that have aroused interest. Are endowments 
desirable for any part of the work? Is it the sounder 
policy to build expensive plants, or to build inexpensive 
plants? 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 141 

It is not the province of the author to express an 
opinion about these matters, but he ventures to submit 
a few thoughts for consideration-: 

An inexpensive plant can be supported with less 
cost than a more expensive plant. Costly buildings 
require an extensive budget. Four modest plants 
can be erected for the cost of one that "strikes the 
visitor with its elegance and completeness." On the 
other hand the more expensive plant is generally the 
gift of generous persons who desire a memorial that 
shall be worthy. It declares that the work is to be 
permanent. Its beauty has an educational value for 
the mountain people, though at first they do not 
recognize it. In all probability the donors of a speci- 
fied sum would not assent to any suggestion to build 
four or five small schools or churches with the sum 
that was given for one, and often there is no choice 
except between a handsome building and no building at 
all. And finally it should be understood that what 
expensive buildings are in the Southern Appalachians 
were erected from specified gifts and not from the 
general missionary fund. 

Somewhat of a similar sort can be said of the matter 
of endowments. "Given a hundred thousand dollars, 
which is better?" it is asked: "To draw five thousand 
dollars a year interest from it to support a work, or to 
use ten or twenty thousand dollars a year for five or 
ten years confident that a larger policy will get results 
that will appeal to the people to give even more liberally 
when the present fund is exhausted?" Or in another 
form the question is put: "Shall wetrust the future 
or distrust it? Will the work be able to commend 



142 Round Robin 

itself, or unable? If it appeals to us to give so freely 
now, will it appeal the less to another generation when 
it becomes more efficient?" 

We would suggest these thoughts as worthy of 
consideration: So long as the general Church gives 
so meagrely to support the work as to make the problem 
of the daily bread an acute problem, distracting the 
worker's mind from his proper activity, so long it is 
desirable that any form of permanent support shall be 
sought: and endowment is the most permanent form — 
far more permanent than a list of annual contributors 
which decreases by a certain percentage yearly. Whether 
rightly or wrongly the Church through her General 
Convention has adopted the principle of endowments, 
in that she will not permit the organization of a diocese 
until provision has been made for the salary of the 
Bishop; and if this principle is adopted for one member 
of the Church it cannot consistently be condemned 
when used for another. Moreover the money given 
for endowments is not taken from other work; it 
would not be available for current support if not used 
for endowment; therefore it is so much net increase in 
contributions to Church support. On the other hand 
it is to be considered that the energy expended in 
securing endowments would be able to raise a large 
amount for current expenditure if turned in that 
direction. For example, a gigantic attempt to raise 
$100,000 endowment may be successful and may net 
four or five thousand dollars a year interest indefinitely; 
but if an annual but not gigantic attempt were made to 
meet current expenses it would do more good by 
raising annually $10,000 than by raising ten times as 
much, for endowment. Moreover, endowment often 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 143 

removes an institution from the interest of the people 
and the officers of the institution from living sympathy 
with the people. Yet after all is said and done, none 
of our institutions will ever have enough endowment 
to pay all its expenses. And some assured income, 
even if it be only a large fraction of the expenses, is a 
very comforting thing to tide over the time of financial 
drought. 

So much is said by way of suggestion, but those two 
topics should be thoroughly discussed as two of the 
actual problems that the Church must face and that 
her laymen must finally determine. 

IV. Some Specific Suggestions 

It is a mistake to give one man too many kinds of 
things to do. The expense account may be diminished 
thus, but the earning capacity is diminished even more. 

The Church has made this very mistake in the past. 
Not to rehearse the familiar instance of the rectors of 
large parishes who are expected to be administrator, 
pastor, priest, preacher, and publicist all rolled in one, 
the colossal mistake which she made in the past, and 
is continuing to some extent in the present, was in 
committing immense territory and widely diverse 
people to the oversight of a single Bishop. Bishop 
Jackson Kemper is a signal instance; and the weakness 
of the Church in the territory once served by him is the 
outcome of the Church's failure to take her missionary 
work seriously. It is true that the attempt of Bishop 
Kemper to do the impossible has given us reason and 
opportunity to laud his heroism: but our praise of 
his heroism has been bought at too dear a price. 



144 Round Robin 

The mission work in the Southern mountains has 
suffered largely from the same cause. The Southern 
dioceses have been territorially so large and the means 
of travel so meagre that with the ability to do only 
a given amount of work the Southern Bishops, who had 
neither the purse of Fortunatus nor the magic carpet of 
Bagdad, have naturally and properly given their 
attention to that part of their dioceses where their 
efforts promised the best returns. The mountains 
promised the least returns, and to do any effective 
work in them would have necessitated neglect of a 
numerically larger and more promising people in other 
parts of the diocese. Now that the parts of the 
dioceses that have been nurtured have responded, the 
demands which they make on their Bishop are increased 
by so much. And the mountains remain the same 
less promising field. 

But, to repeat what was said in Chapter IV, the 
mind of Southern Churchmen is now beginning to 
realize that the work among the mountain people 
is of such magnitude and importance as to deserve 
and demand the undivided attention of those who are 
charged with its oversight, and that in the Church it 
is but a temporary expedient to give the oversight 
to any but a Bishop. Kentucky met the demand 
when the diocese of Lexington was erected. Virginia 
and Southern Virginia have made ample provision 
by electing Coadjutor Bishops, North Carolina made 
provision by setting off the District of Asheville. 
Georgia did the same by forming her northern half 
into the Diocese of Atlanta. 

But the old handicap to the most efficient work still 
remains in the dioceses of South Carolina, Tennessee 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 145 

and Alabama, where very diverse and conflicting 
duties and interests yet prevent the Bishops and 
missionary bords from turning their full attention to 
the mountain work. The mountain work in these 
dioceses will continue to be subordinated to other 
work, and therefore, will continue to be done on a 
small scale, until in each of them the overseer is appoint- 
ed that the policy of this Church calls for — not an 
archdeacon but a Bishop. Whether this shall be 
accomplished in each diocese by the election of a 
Coadjutor Bishop, by the erection of a new diocese, or 
by the setting apart of the Highland section as a 
missionary district, is an important but minor question. 
South Carolina and Alabama will probably solve it by 
the erection of new dioceses in the not distant future. 
Tennessee will not be able to erect a new diocese, its 
communicant list in that section being confined prac- 
tically to the cities of Chattanooga and Knoxville; 
its solution will have to be either a Coadjutor for the 
whole state, or the cession of East Tennessee to the 
General Church as a Missionary District. 

Strategically East Tennessee is the first place into 
which the Church will pour its strength if an advance 
is determined upon: for it contains approximately as 
great a mountain population as the District of Asheville, 
and yet has done practically nothing for them except 
in the Sewanee and Monterey groups. 

Of course, if the Church is not to be a nursing mother 
for these sections there is neither rhyme nor reason 
in electing coadjutors, erecting dioceses, or ceding 
missionary districts. There should be a settled policy 
determined upon by the General Board of Missions, 



146 Round Robin 

but that policy must be guided by the attitude of 
Churchmen generally toward such a campaign. The 
possession and the lack of ammunition are mighty 
factors in any warfare. The workers in the field 
must be fed and clothed; churches, schools, settlement 
houses, and hospitals must be built and equipped and 
maintained. The scale on which the work should be 
done should be neither lordly nor niggardly, but it 
must be generous. If the work is not worth doing 
thoroughly it should not be done at all. More churches 
than the Church of the Laodiceans have been spued 
out because they were neither hot nor cold but luke- 
warm. 

Since the writing of this book was undertaken the 
request has come that the author estimate the number 
of workers and the amount of money necessary to 
equip the whole field thoroughly and maintain it 
reasonably. 

It is impossible to name even approximately either 
the number or the amount. Each is greater than it is 
possible for the Church to contribute, and what the 
Church does contribute of each will fall far short of 
what can be used immediately and wisely. A com- 
parison may make this clearer. No one thinks that 
Alaska is overmanned or too liberally supported, yet 
to its scattered population, totalling only 64,000 souls, 
the Church has sent 14 clergymen. To meet the 
problems in the Southern Appalachians, every whit as 
urgent as those in Alaska, the Church would have to 
send not the 50 clergymen and the 115 lay workers 
now in the field but 1,000 clergymen and more than 
2,500 lay workers; and to support the work in the 
same proportion would call for not the $25,000 received 



The Southern Highlands and Highlanders 147 

annually from all outside sources, but $3,300,000! 
Not one-tenth of this amount is likely to be given soon; 
neither 100 additional clergymen nor 250 additional 
lay workers nor $300,000 could be used immediately. 

But there should be immediate and great advance 
in every line. Contributions should be multiplied 
to enlarge the life of those of our own household, to 
make them better fathers and mothers, more efficient 
citizens, and more enlightened Christians. 

Workers must be added in large numbers, both 
clerical and lay. 

Volunteers are needed to preach the Gospel and bring 
men to the Sacraments; to teach men and women, 
boys and girls, to read and to write, that they may 
gain and communicate larger thoughts; to visit and 
nurse the sick; to give examples in making the living 
place an attractive home; to chain vagrant fancies to 
constructive labor; and to take part in the multitude 
of activities that to-day take their appropriate place 
in the missionary work that seeks to lead the whole 
man, body, soul and spirit, into consecrated holiness. 

Especially are women workers needed, large-hearted, 
clear headed women; women sound in body, plain in 
speech, unaffected in manner, heroic in spirit; women 
whose heroism has no illusions as to heroics, who may 
expect never to be maltreated but often to suffer 
acutest discomforts in the daily living. Women of 
this sort who will give themselves to this work are 
women who, reproducing the spirit, shall reap the 
reward of Him who for our sakes became poor that he 
might make many rich. 



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